Moviemaker - Issue 137 - Fall 2020

T H E W O R L D ’ S 5 0 B E S T G E N R E F E S T I VA L S
CLOSED
CIRCUIT
AARON SORKIN RETURNS TO HIS
COURTROOM DRAMA ROOTS WITH
THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7
THE
COMPLETE
GUIDE TO
MAKING
MOVIES
ISSUE 137, VOL. 27, FALL 2020
2021
DISPLAY UNTIL JANUARY 31, 2021
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MM NOTEBOOK
SEX SCENE, to be affected the most: those with physical

intimacy, fights, and crowd scenes.
FIGHT SCENE,
“Maybe we’ll go back a little bit to where
we’re less explicit,” says Gipson, only partly ISSUE NO. 137, VOLUME 27
joking. “It could be sweet… maybe romance will FALL 2020/COMPLETE GUIDE TO MAKING
MOVIES
CROWD SCENE
come back more.” PHONE: 310/828-8388
No one will mistake the process of shooting ASSISTANT@MOVIEMAKER.COM
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Expect anyone in an intimate scene to be tested
SAG-AFTRA and SAGindie on throwing away more than others on set, and to be separated PUBLISHER
the old script on how to make a movie from the crew as much as possible. The practice DEIRDRE MCCARRICK
of an entire crew watching an intimate scene, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
BY TIM MOLLOY which was never the best idea, is now a thing TIM MOLLOY
of the past. MANAGING EDITOR
“We hope and expect that producers will do CALEB HAMMOND
everything in their power to reduce the amount DIGITAL DIRECTOR
Y
OU NO DOUBT KNOW that certain of time spent without PPE in close proximity,” MARK SELLS
things are about to become as common Crabtree-Ireland says. “Scenes or setups will be ART DIRECTOR
on film sets as scripts: personal protec- designed to minimize that amount of time, not KAY LAI SCANLON
tive equipment, medical testing, and different have actors lingering in close proximity without DESIGNER
zones. Actually, those things may soon be more PPE.” RYAN WARD
common than scripts, because no one’s going to The pandemic may create opportunities ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR
needlessly pass around paper when they can use for co-stars who are couples in real life, since IAN BAGE
phones and tablets. they’re already quarantined together. But pro-
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE, FILM FESTIVALS
This is all good news—first, because the ductions will need to be sure they’re following PAUL AVERY
new protocols will keep people fair hiring practices, and not using
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE, FILM COMMISSIONS
safe. And second, because the COVID-19 to justify nepotism, adds
DREW MAYER-OAKES
new protocols for moviemak- Gipson. Another option is to use
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
ing means there will still be actors’ real-life partners as body
GREG GILMAN, DANIEL JOYAUX,
moviemaking. We talked with doubles.
HARPER LAMBERT, NATALIA LEITE ,
SAGindie executive director Fight scenes will also take more JON C. SCHEIDE, RYAN STEWART
Darrien Michele Gipson and choreography than ever before,
INTERNS
SAG-AFTRA general counsel she notes, and will involve medical
SAMUEL LIVELY, SOPHIE MARTINEZ,
Duncan Crabtree-Ireland about personnel. “Your stunt coordinator AMAYA OSWALD, LOREE SEITZ
everything that’s changing. is your expert on action, but isn’t
MOVIEMAKER PRODUCTION
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including SAG-AFTRA, agreed protocols,” Gipson says. TIM RHYS
in September to a new series The hardest scenes to cheat MOVIEMAKER PRODUCTION
of protocols that include social might not involve sex or violence— SERVICES COORDINATOR
distancing, using PPE like masks but just people gathering in groups. CALEB HAMMOND
and shields whenever feasible, A street scene might be pos- FOUNDER
and dividing teams into zones so sible with clever camera angles, TIM RHYS
that a positive COVID-19 test in Crabtree-Ireland says. “But if we’re
one zone doesn’t shut down the talking about just mass crowd TO DISTRIBUTE MOVIEMAKER
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2 FALL 2020 / COMPLETE GUIDE TO MAKING MOVIES MOVIEMAKER.COM
137_Notebook_DONE.indd 2 9/30/20 6:40 AM MOVIEM

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CONTENTS
THE 2021 COMPLETE GUIDE TO MAKING MOVIES
Welcome to the issue

CHAPTER ONE:
SCREENWRITING 30. You Don’t Have to Write
at Four in the Morning
The writer-director-star of The
21. Introduction Forty-Year-Old Version on writing
By Justin Benson and Aaron her striking debut
Moorhead By Radha Blank
22. The In-Between Mo- CHAPTER TWO:

ments DEVELOPMENT
The writer-director of I’m
Thinking of Ending Things on
“writing walks” and adaptations 33. Introduction
60
By Charlie Kaufman By Justin Benson, Aaron Moor-
head and David Lawson
24. Finding a Positive Way

to Write 34. Harsh World
How The Nest writer-director The production designer of Dune
on bringing Frank Herbert’s 42. Charm, Lie, Beg 56. Make New Mistakes
created his ’80s familial drama
over several years planets to life The director of Shithouse didn’t The director of Happiest Season
By Patrice Vermette know what development was on how her acting experience
By Sean Durkin
when he began. Now he does informed her sophomore feature
By Cooper Raiff By Clea DuVall
28. The Story Inside 38. Push and Pull

The Father writer-director on The On the Rocks cinematogra-
pher embraces questions when
46. ________ Is Dead. Cin- 60. The Heart of Bond
adapting his play into his debut ema Is Alive.
feature working with Sofia Coppola Making director Cary Fukunaga’s
To make Dick Johnson is Dead, No Time to Die a romantic thrill
By Florian Zellner By Philippe Le Sourd
LEFT, COURTESY OF APPLE TV+ / A24; PHOTO BY NICOLA DOVE / UNITED ARTISTS / MGM
Kirsten Johnson had to kill her ride
father—several times By Linus Sandgren
By Kirsten Johnson
72. Shooting on Pandemic
50. Make a Battle Plan Time
Merging the practical world with The Don’t Fear 1st assistant direc-
an imagined one for Greyhound tor on shooting fast—and safely
By Aaron Schneider By Jon C. Scheide
CHAPTER THREE: 74. Just Dance

PRODUCTION Director Pietro Marcello and ac-
PHOTO BY NIKO TAVERNISE / NETFLIX
tor Luca Marinelli team up for a

Jack London adaptation
54. Introduction Moderated by Sally Fischer
By Justin Benson, Aaron Moor-
head and David Lawson
38
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66
COVER STORY
AARON SORKIN’s film
about the 1968 Chicago
riots couldn’t feel
more relevant
LEFT, COURTESY OF APPLE TV+ / A24; PHOTO BY NICOLA DOVE / UNITED ARTISTS / MGM
By Caleb Hammond
CCLOSED
LOSED
IRCUITT
CCIRCUI
AARON SORKIN RETURNS TO HIS
AARON SORKINDRAMA
COURTROOM RETURNS
ROOTS TO
WITHHIS
THE TRIALDRAMA
COURTROOM OF THE CHICAGO
ROOTS7WITH
THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 THE
COMPLETE THE
GUIDECOMPLETE
TO
MAKING
GUIDE TO
MOVIES
MAKING
2021
MOVIES

ALSO: 2021
DUNE | NO TIME TO DIE | NEWS OF THE WORLD
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ALSO: DUNE | NO TIME TO DIE | NEWS OF THE WORLD
MOVIEMAKER.COM FALL 2020 / COMPLETE GUIDE TO MAKING MOVIES 6

CONTENTS
THE 2021 COMPLETE GUIDE TO MAKING MOVIES
74
CHAPTER FOUR: CHAPTER FIVE: 10. Exclusive Book Excerpt: 104. Film Abroad and Save
POST- DISTRIBUTION Paul Thomas Anderson : Nine of the world’s most attrac-
PRODUCTION Masterworks tive production incentives
PTA had plenty to prove with By Emily Buder
91. Introduction Boogie Nights

By Adam Nayman
78. Introduction By Justin Benson, Aaron Moor- 106. The World’s Best Film
By Justin Benson, Aaron Moor- head, and David Lawson Schools by the Beach
head and David Lawson 14. Callboard Make movies. Bring a towel
92. Love Your IP; Own Your IP We speak to a fulldome expert By Tim Molloy
80. The Film Comes First How the creators of Black Love about a format that just might be
The Oscar-award winning editor kept the rights to their show the future
108. Festival Beat
on his latest Paul Greengrass col- By Caleb Hammond
By Codie Elaine Oliver
laboration, News of the World
By William Goldenberg 110. Call for Entries /
94. Distribution, Demystified 18. Flash Forward Advertiser Index
84. ‘The Writer of Your Own The StudioFest founders on dis- Shatara Michelle Ford made Test
Response’ tributing their indie feature Pattern by rejecting ways that
didn’t include her 111. In Focus: Play Think
Time director Garrett Bradley By Jess Jacklin Entertainment
combined new footage with By Harper Lambert
deeply personal home videos COLUMNS & 112. Eye Piece: The Trial
By Robert Greene DEPARTMENTS: 96. The World’s 50 Best of the Chicago 7
Genre Festivals in 2021
How the Trial of the Chicago 7
88. Turning Sound Into a The best places on earth to be
cinematographer kept courtroom
Digital Monster
PHOTO BY FRANCESCA ERRICHIELLO
2. Notebook awed, scared and thrilled

scenes fresh
The director and sound supervi- By Tim Molloy
By Tim Molloy By Phedon Papamichael
sor of The Sound of Metal on
how they built an immersive
soundscape on an indie budget 8. Contributors
By Caleb Hammond

SAN ANTONIO
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CONTRIBUTORS
Guest MovieMakers JUSTIN BENSON and AARON MOORHEAD, known as

Moorhead&Benson, are the co-directing team behind Spring, The Endless, Resolu-
tion, and now Synchronic. Their films have been acclaimed by critics and audiences
for their naturalistic performances and avant-garde approach to genre storytelling.
They wear as many hats as possible on their own films: writing, directing, produc-
ing, cinematography, editing, even visual effects. DAVID LAWSON’s love of film
started at an early age, when he lived in Baltimore. After high school, he enlisted
in the Air Force. He met many people who shared his affinity for cinema, and took
to heart their core values: integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all
you do. Synchronic marks David’s fourth feature film with Moorhead&Benson, and
eighth overall. In 2018, the three of them formed Rustic Films. Synchronic, starring
Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie, is the second film under the trio’s new banner.
Goldenberg received Oscar, BAFTA and A.C.E on The Oath. She teaches Visual Thinking in
CLEA DUVALL is best nominations for editing The Imitation Game the NYU Graduate Journalism Department. In
known for her work as and Zero Dark Thirty (with Dylan Tichenor). 2017, she was awarded the Chicken and Egg
an actor on such films He was nominated for Oscars for Seabiscuit Breakthrough Filmmaker Award and she is
as Girl, Interrupted, and The Insider (with Paul Rubell and David currently a Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow.
But I’m a Cheerleader, Rosenbloom). His other credits include She is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow and was
and the Best Picture Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit, Ben Affleck’s recently invited to be one of the four percent of
winner Argo. Clea also Live by Night and Gone Baby Gone, Peter ASC members who are women. Read Kirsten’s
has a passion for writing and directing. She Landsman’s Concussion, Angelina Jolie’s Un- piece on developing her latest documentary
wrote, executive produced, directed, and broken (with Tim Squyres) Michael Mann’s feature, Dick Johnson is Dead on pg. 46.
starred in The Intervention, which received Miami Vice, Ali, and Heat, and Michael Bay’s
the Special Jury Prize at the 2016 Sundance Transformers III and IV. Read his piece on CODIE ELAINE OLIVER
Film Festival. Her upcoming project, Sony’s collaborating with Greengrass on News of is a film and television
Happiest Season, is set to be released on No- the World on pg. 80. producer, as well as a
vember 25th. The holiday romantic comedy partner at Confluential
is co-written and directed by DuVall and KIRSTEN JOHNSON is Films, a production
includes Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, a cinematographer and company she shares
and Daniel Levy. Additionally, DuVall has director interested in with her husband,
guest starred in award-winning shows such addressing the changing Tommy Oliver. She co-created and currently
as Broad City, Veep, and most recently, The dimensions and ethical directs Black Love, a two-time NAACP Im-
Handmaid’s Tale. Read how Clea used her challenges of documen- age Awards-nominated series going into
acting experience to guide her on-set direc- tary camerawork. Cam- its fourth season. The show debuted as the
tion of her latest, Happiest Season on pg. 56. eraperson, which premiered at Sundance 2016, most-viewed unscripted series in the history
was named one of the Top Ten Films of 2016 of the OWN Network. Codie also oversees
WILLIAM GOLDEN- by The New York Times and the Washington BlackLove.com, which the Olivers created
BERG, A.C.E., most Post. It was the Grand Jury Prize Winner of to give voice to all things love in the Black
recently edited Paul nine international festivals, and is distributed community. Codie is a proud Howard Uni-
Greengrass’s News by The Criterion Collection. Kirsten’s camera- versity grad and mama to three boys under
of the World starring work has appeared in the Academy Award- four years old, learning every day how to
Tom Hanks. He previ- winning Citizenfour, Risk, Oscar-nominated find balance between entrepreneurship
ously collaborated with The Invisible War, Fahrenheit 9/11, and more. and family. Read how she and Tommy
Greengrass on 22 July. He won the Academy She shared the Sundance 2010 Cinematogra- retained the rights to their show Black
Award, BAFTA, and A.C.E. Award for Argo. phy Award with Laura Poitras for their work Love on pg. 92.
137_Contributors_DONE.indd 8 9/30/20 6:56 AM

at Concordia University in Montreal. His when it premiered at the Toronto Interna-
COOPER RAIFF is a first feature film as a production designer tional Film Festival and earned Schneider
23-year-old filmmaker was 2005’s C.R.A.Z.Y. He followed up with the Independent Spirit Award for Best
from Dallas. He and Jean-Marc Vallee’s Café de Flore and The First Feature. His short film “Two Soldiers”
his two best friends Young Victoria, for which he received his won an Academy Award for Best Live
made a short film from first Academy Award nomination in 2010. Action Short Film. He began his career
stolen equipment, His recent film credits include The Mountain as a cinematographer, earning an Emmy
then tweeted a link of Between Us, Vice, Enemy, Prisoners, Sicario nomination and winning two ASC Awards
it to Jay Duplass. To their surprise, Duplass and Arrival, for which he gained his second for his work on Murder One. Other credits
liked the film and helped them develop it Oscar nomination in 2017. Read about how include features such as Kiss The Girls and
into the feature-length version of Shithouse he and Denis Villeneuve developed the look Simon Birch, and second unit on James
that made its World Premiere at SXSW. Raiff of Dune on pg. 34. Cameron’s Titanic. Schneider was born
wrote, directed, edited, and starred in Shit- and raised in Illinois, and met Billy Crystal
house, his feature debut, which you can read AARON SCHNEIDER by chance on a family vacation. Crystal
all about on pg. 42. is the director of the advised him to attend film school, so he
World War II thriller transferred out of mechanical engineering
PATRICE VERMETTE Greyhound, starring into USC’s School of Cinema-Television.
started his career Tom Hanks, released Years later, while accepting an Academy
designing music on Apple TV+. Award for Best Narrative Short for “Two
videos and television Schneider’s first fea- Soldiers,” Schneider caught sight of host
commercials in 1991, ture, Get Low, which starred Robert Duvall Billy Crystal and thanked him. Read his
following his studies and Bill Murray, drew widespread praise piece on developing Greyhound on pg. 50.
137_Contributors_DONE.indd 9 9/30/20 6:56 AM

EXCLUSIVE BOOK EXCERPT
YOU’RE NOT THE

KING OF DIRK
Boogie Nights and the promise of Paul Thomas Anderson
B Y A D A M N AY M A N
Editor’s Note: In his next film, Paul Thomas Anderson will return to the 1970s San Fernando
Valley setting of his 1997 breakthrough, Boogie Nights. After a frustrating rollout for his debut,
Hard Eight, Anderson had a lot to prove, as Adam Nayman writes in his new retrospective
Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks.
F
RINGED BY MOUNTAINS on all porn: It’s the same matter of prospecting gestion is one of absolute, biblical innocence
sides, the San Fernando Valley runs and manifest destiny depicted in There Will corrupted. “All I ever wanted was a cool ’78
directly adjacent to Hollywood Be Blood. If Jack, the surveyor of up-and- ’Vette and a house in the country” sighs
without officially being part of it. Its comers has struck gold, so has Eddie, who the original Diggler (played by Anderson’s
semi-tropical horizontal sprawl is over the course of the film makes the most friend Matt Stein), a line that splits the dif-
fully visible from the long and winding Mul- of his Lana Turner-ish “discovery,” parlaying ference between giggly irony and genuine
holland Drive—an appropriately downcast his diamond-in-the-rough origins into glit- pathos when it’s revealed that it’s been
glance along a distinctly slippery slope of tering marquee stardom. attributed posthumously.
aspirations. Historically, the Valley is where That the name in lights is not actually It’s hard to know what to make of the idea
movies too dirty for the light of day are his own is in keeping with the vicissitudes that a homemade thirty-two-minute pisstake
made: the migration of the of showbiz. No sooner written and directed while Anderson was a
“ CAN’T YOU
porn industry to Los Angeles has Eddie been plucked high school senior is ultimately more realistic
in the wake of Hugh Hefner’s out of obscurity than he’s (or at least fatalistic) about the fate of its
innovations (and the erection rebranded himself as “Dirk protagonist than the two-and-a-half hour,
of the Playboy Mansion in Diggler,” an alliterative Oscar-nominated epic that it begat. The frus-
the Hollywood Hills) turned
the suburb into a funnel for
GET A JOB and allusive nom de plume
riffing on the promise and
tration of Boogie Nights is that it tries to have
it both ways: to be trenchant and sentimental
talent on both sides of the
camera. LIKE THIS IN prominence of his dick. The
name is a joke and a boast,
about an era and an industry that were both
hugely formative for its creator while lying
Jack Horner (Burt Reyn- and also a carryover from just outside his lived experience, conflat-
olds) is a bit of a Hefner man- TORRANCE? Paul Thomas Anderson’s ing history and fantasy under the sign of
qué, one whose eye for talent 1988 mockumentary “The re-creation. The common auteur-biographical
PHOTO CREDIT: EVERETT COLLECTION INC./ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

— JACK HORNER “
comes with a well-rehearsed Dirk Diggler Story,” an interpretation of Boogie Nights is that it uses
gift for flattery. “A seventeen- assured short made when Eddie/Dirk as a stand-in for, if not Anderson
year-old piece of gold,” is his the director was seventeen. himself (the director would have been seven
assessment of Eddie Adams (Mark Wahl- The rough-hewn mockumentary style is when the story begins in 1977), then his
berg), who buses to his dishwashing job at borrowed from This Is Spinal Tap (1984); its artistic potency. This reading contextualizes
the Hot Traxx Disco in Reseda from not-so- well-endowed protagonist is based on the the film’s assertive technique as well as its
nearby Torrance. It’s an arduous commute adult film star John Holmes, as depicted in relatively upbeat ending, which finds Dirk
for a crappy gig. “Can’t you get a job like the 1981 profile Exhausted. The relationship living in the country (chez Jack Horner),
this in Torrance?” Jack asks coyly, because between these two films has been well- and still in possession of a ’78 ’Vette which,
he knows the answer. He can tell at a glance documented over the years in stories about despite getting shot up during a botched
that Eddie wants to be where the action is. Anderson’s creative evolution, with the drug deal, remains mostly intact. The hero is
And in Reseda, he’s close enough. latter easily understood as a remake-cum- humbled in a strictly productive sense, and,
Both of these men—the auteur and the expansion of its amateurish inspiration; it’s crucially, eludes any sort of definitive literal
ingenue—are playing their parts in a dis- telling that in both versions of the story, the or figurative emasculation. Eddie/Dirk is
tinctly Californian narrative that predates lead’s given surname is “Adams.” The sug- photographed full-frontal in the final shot
137_Book Excerpt - Masterworks - Paul Thomas Anderson_Second_Changes.indd 10 9/30/20 8:13 AM

to show that his penis (massive even only at Fiction. Executive Mike De Luca was still with independent distributor Rysher over
half-mast) is still healthy enough to wield stinging from having passed on Tarantino’s the editing and release of Hard Eight saw
with impunity. Coming at the end of a movie debut feature Reservoir Dogs, and looking him labeled in the press as an enfant ter-
whose aesthetic is defined simultaneously to develop a movie with a similarly high-end rible; now they could be spun as a display
by size, rhythm, and duration—beyond-the- return on investment. Jason Sperb writes of heroic principle rather than hubris.
frame production design; excitably accelerat- that De Luca “was intrigued by the pros- The risks for an American movie using
ed montage; elongated tracking shots calling pects of another hip, pop-song-driven retro sex as its primary subject and texture
attention to their own athletic stamina—the film . . . like Pulp Fiction, Boogie Nights had were very real in 1997. Two years earlier,
image seems coded as triumphant as well as the potential to make profits on soundtrack Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls (1995) had
promissory, as if Anderson were slyly advo- joined the ranks of Heaven’s Gate (1980)
cating on his own behalf. It’s an ending that and Ishtar (1987) as a canonical flop, ef-
suggests he’s only just begun. • MARK WAHLBERG, fectively dissolving the cycle of profitable
Although not a debut feature, Boogie PRE-DIRK DIGGLER. Hollywood eroticism sparked a decade
Nights was received with the language of earlier by Fatal Attraction (1987). Showgirls’
discovery when it premiered in September failure stemmed in part from Verhoeven’s
1997 at the Toronto International Film Festi- insistence on an NC-17 rating, and Ander-
val. “I have seen the new Quentin Tarantino, son’s original cut of Boogie Nights would
and his name is Paul Thomas Anderson,” have probably secured a similarly scarlet
wrote Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Glei- letter from the censors (he wisely gave
berman in a breathless dispatch modeled on himself enough wiggle room to negotiate
Rolling Stone writer Jon Landau’s review of an R-rating while letting the MPAA feel it
a 1974 Bruce Springsteen concert: “Tonight, had done its due diligence). What eventu-
I saw rock ’n’ roll’s future and its name is ally boosted Boogie Nights’ box office even
Bruce Springsteen.” more than the wave of admiring reviews or
In both cases, the artist in question was the hype over Anderson was how it seemed
slightly more established than the rhetoric to be directly commenting on the climate of
being used to herald them could admit: By Puritan paranoia around the Bill Clinton-
1974, Springsteen had already released the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal—not condon-
critically acclaimed (though initially low- ing or condemning, but instead offering a
selling) LP Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ vicarious escape into an earlier era where
while Anderson’s resume circa 1997 included judgment could be more easily suspended.
the well-received crime drama Hard Eight. The film’s nostalgia was not only supremely
What Gleiberman was getting at was that marketable, but also a source of reassur-
Boogie Nights, like Pulp Fiction before it, sales alone.” In a post-Tarantino moment ance. No less than the biblical epics of the
had the potential to make its director a when the existence of a thriving, viable 1950s, with their harems of loose women
household name, and also to parlay a set of American independent cinema seemed and prop-department golden calves collaps-
risque, explicit and even taboo elements into more possible than at any time since the ing the gulf between Hollywood and Baby-
critical and box-office success. 1970s, and the cult of auteurism had been lon, Boogie Nights’ fixation on the 1970s
The relatively generous $15 million resurrected—with Hard Eight cited as a as an idea, as well as a setting, subsumed
budget bestowed by New Line Studios was flashpoint—a filmmaker with ambition was contemporary titillation into the anachro-
a direct response to the success of Pulp a valuable commodity. Anderson’s clashes nistic trappings of a period piece.
PHOTO CREDIT: EVERETT COLLECTION INC./ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

For Anderson, Boogie Nights’ setting and

subject matter were a matter of personal
history. He grew up in the San Fernando
Valley surrounded by porn shoots, and
wrote “The Dirk Diggler Story” as an hom-
age to his father’s extensive home-video col-
lection (of which he displayed encyclopedic
recall). When queried, Anderson expressed
an unironic and unapologetic love for adult
films, copping in particular to a fondness
for the indefatigable, tragic Holmes, whose
death from AIDS is alluded to in “The Dirk
Diggler Story” but oddly omitted from
Boogie Nights. The film pays no attention
to the disease despite covering the period
associated with its inception, an omission
that undermines its attempts to fully evoke
the era and its anxieties, consequences and
casualties and indicates a timorousness at • HEATHER GRAHAM AS ROLLERGIRL,
WITH PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON.
odds with the movie’s overt boldness—a
sanitizing impulse.
Beneath the nostalgia and fetishism of
Boogie Nights’ origins lay thornier im- That we are meant to sympathize and iden- derie to Dirk in an attempt to disguise his
pulses. Hard Eight was harshly treated by its tify with Eddie in the first case but not Dirk in deep-seated romantic attraction. “Little”
distributor—re-cut and re-titled, a symbolic the second is in keeping with Boogie Nights’ Bill Thompson (William H. Macy), Jack’s
circumcision— and Anderson’s desire to underlying thesis about the thin line belong-tenured assistant, leverages an easygo-
make a follow-up on his own terms was tween desire and self-delusion, which figures ing swinger persona against the rage and
unshakeable. “I wrote [Boogie Nights] fueled into the psychology of almost all of its main paranoia building up every time he catches
by a desire for revenge on all the people who characters. Eddie yearns for stardom, but once his wife (Nina Hartley) in flagrante delicto
told me I’d never amount to anything,” he he achieves it, the winning innocence that with a stranger (or two).
told Creative Screenwriting—an observa- initially hypnotizes the camera becomes cor- In a movie of symbolically ejaculatory
tion that connects to the petulance that roded and he’s exposed as a limited talent—an outbursts, Bill’s decision to commit an act
manifests around the edges of the script. The archetypally cruel starlet narra- of unfathomable savagery in
first instance is Eddie’s defiant tirade against
his overbearing mother (Joanna Gleason)
tive transposed, provocatively
(if not necessarily more than “ the midst of a New Year’s Eve
party is the most startling,
after she tells him he’s a loser; in light of that) onto a male ingenue. Jack I’M THE BOSS made more unsettling by the
Anderson’s comments, it’s hard to not hear sees himself as a principled implications of its staging.
the filmmaker’s voice in Eddie’s response. artist deploying eroticism in the OF ME. I’M THE When Jack apprises Eddie as
“You don’t know what I can do!” he service of storytelling, whose a “seventeen-year-old piece of
bellows at her before packing his bags to
leave Torrance for good. “You don’t know
dream is to “make a film that
is true and right and dramatic,”
KING OF ME. gold,” it’s in the aftermath of a
virtuoso three-and-a-half min-
what I can do, what I’m gonna do, or what yet he more believably displays — DIRK DIGGLER “ ute take that prowls through
I’m gonna be! I’m good! I have good things the traits of an exploiter and an Hot Traxx, introducing nearly
that you don’t know about! I’m gonna be enabler and, at his lowest point, all of the film’s key players and
something! I am! And don’t fucking tell me capitulates to the sensationalism his oeuvre emphasizing their tender, multi-directional
PHOTO CREDIT: TCD/PROD.DB/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
I’m not!” means to resist. Amber Waves (Julianne affection: They’re all happily caught up in the
Much later in the film, after Eddie has Moore) has styled herself as a sort of den camera’s swirl. As the Emotions’ throbbing,
adopted the decadent Dirk Diggler persona mother for Jack’s repertory—a rock of stability upbeat disco hit “The Best of My Love” plays
and enjoyed the spoils of his star-is-born and support— while she struggles with the in the background, Boogie Nights’ opening
narrative, he more or less repeats this guilt of being separated from her biological conveys, in high style, a moment and a com-
outburst, directing his energy instead at son and the ravages of a cocaine habit (her munity where everything seems possible and
Jack, his surrogate father. Well past the yonic moniker signals maternal anxiety). permissible. It’s a continuation—or reboot—
need to argue for his own potential, he tries Buck Swope (Don Cheadle) can’t reconcile the of late-sixties Californian utopianism even af-
to assert dominance: “You’re not the king of flamboyance of his post–Cleavon Little “Black ter the nightmares of Altamont and Manson,
Dirk. I’m the boss of me. I’m the king of me. Cowboy” shtick with his wish to open a stereo events whose counter-cultural implications
I’m Dirk Diggler. I’m the star. It’s my big equipment store. Hanger-on Scotty (Philip are absent in the shiny, accessible decadence
dick and I say when we roll.” Seymour Hoffman) proffers macho camara- on display. The idea of a lifestyle without

painful reality of their own desires, as in employed it is intentionally bewildering,

the moment where Scotty makes an ill-fated recalling the irregular and eccentric use
pass at Dirk and ends up crying alone in of title cards in The Shining, a hor-
his new muscle car, helplessly consolidat- ror movie that was set, produced and
ing his position as an outsider to a set of released in 1980. But the Kubrick joint
heterosexual revels. The sight gag of Buck, that comes more readily to mind in the
whose girlfriend has dumped him, sitting aftermath of Bill’s act is Full Metal Jacket,
alone in Nile Rodgers drag both in the way Anderson
similarly places him at the copies the composition of
margins of his adoptive the suicide itself—includ-
family; when he chats ing the way blood and
up his sometime co-star brain spatters against the
Jessie (Melora Walters), back wall as in an action
it’s only because the lat- painting—and uses the
ter has, like Scotty, been imagery of “climax” to
rejected by Dirk, who has reset the narrative. In
in turn just been seduced Full Metal Jacket, Pvt.
by Amber into trying Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio)
cocaine for the first time. kills Sgt. Hartman (R. Lee
By the time the camera Ermey) in ecstatic defi-
attaches itself to Bill as ance of the Parris Island
he walks in on his wife barracks’ top-down, au-
cheating on him yet again, THE VALLEY. thoritarian sense of order
limitations or boundaries is emblematized by stalks outside to his car (a before turning the gun
Heather Graham’s “Rollergirl,” a porn starlet path linking him subtly to on himself in a gesture of
in Jack’s stable whose gimmick is having sex Scotty), and returns with a punishment and orgasmic re-
in her roller skates. In the opening scene, pistol in hand, the film’s trademark sense lease (paying off the Marine Corps’ rheto-
she’s like a cartoonishly obscure object of of momentum has become pressurized, and ric of a rifle as an extension of the soldier
desire, careening through Hot Traxx with an even weaponized: instead of being carried who carries it). Bill’s gesture signifies
intrepid, headlong momentum; her serene along on a wave of euphoria, we’re trapped something else. Beyond its parameters as
velocity suggests the thrill of the chase, or on a downward trajectory. a completely localized act of vengeance
maybe the elusiveness of genuine fulfillment Bill’s terrible act serves as a jolt at the and catharsis, it’s like a general rejoinder
in a milieu calibrated in favor of all things exact midpoint of the movie, confirming to the gleeful hedonism of Jack Horner’s
fleeting. Boogie Nights as a fully bifurcated work. The little corner of the Valley: a money shot of
The tracking shot during the New murder-suicide is staged as the grim herald a different kind. MM
Year’s Eve party, meanwhile, reverses that of shifting decades: in the instant of Bill’s
heady sense of optimism, moving instead death, Anderson throws up a title card read- Excerpt from the new book Paul Thomas
inexorably towards a set of consequences. ing, simply, “80s.” The sudden introduction Anderson: Masterworks by Adam
Throughout the party sequence, charac- of this particular narrational device eighty Nayman, published by Abrams. Text ©
ters are shown bumping up against the minutes into a film that has not previously 2020 Adam Nayman and Little White Lies.
SUBMIT YOUR FILM OR SCREENPLAY

PHOTO CREDIT: TCD/PROD.DB/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
13th Annual
Oct 12-16, 2021
Rhode Island
Bringing people together

through film, music & art

CALLBOARD
The
Next
BIG
THING
CAN FULLDOME BE
THE NEXT IMAX?
BY CALEB HAMMOND
• COMPLEX ASTRONOMICAL
VISUALIZATION CALCULATED
Many of us are a long way from IN REAL TIME INSIDE A DIGITAL
FULLDOME THEATER
feeling comfortable in a movie

theater. But when we do go back,
after months of watching screens
at home, we may seek out the
biggest, most immersive
experience possible
E nter fulldome.
Fulldome is a large-format form of entertainment typically found at plane-
tariums founded just over 20 years ago. Remember when IMAX was mostly for
kids on field trips? That’s how it is with fulldome now. But that may change as
moviemakers seek new mediums and challenges—ones with the immersive-
ness of VR, but the collective experience of watching with an audience.
MovieMaker spoke with Michael Daut, a seasoned media specialist who began working
with the format when it was brand-new.
Caleb Hammond, MovieMaker Magazine: What’s your history with fulldome?

Michael Daut: In 1998, I moved to Utah to work in the marketing department at Evans
& Sutherland, who essentially invented computer graphics back in the late ’60s. In 1999
the annual SIGGRAPH conference was held in Los Angeles. It was an opportunity for the
company to show off this fulldome technology that they had been inventing. Essentially
we wanted to use this immersive technology to create a marketing piece around one of
PHOTOS BY MICHAEL DAUT
our computer graphics cards that we were rolling out. And nobody put their hand up to
produce this show, because nothing had been produced in this format before. So, I put my
hand up: “I’ll do it.”
The tools at that time were extremely primitive, but it ended up coming together really
well. Because of my work on that show, the digital theater division at Evans & Sutherland
brought me over and then I became the director of show production and helped shepherd
OFTEN SYNCHRONIZED WITH DIGITAL FULL-
DOME SYSTEMS, THESE OPTICAL-MECHANICAL about 20 fulldome films in various roles: writer, producer, director. Not always all three but
STAR PROJECTORS DATE BACK TO THE ’20S.
137_Callboard_DONE.indd 16 9/30/20 7:07 AM

• A SIMPLE COMPUTER
INTERFACE ALLOWS
OPERATORS TO CREATE EXTERIOR OF THE 8K DIGITAL DOME THEATER AT
AND RUN SHOWS IN A THE CHINA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MUSEUM,
FULLDOME THEATER BEJING, CHINA.
FROM A CLUSTER OF
COMPUTERS
MovieMaker: If one of our readers thinks,

“I have a lot of ideas that could potentially
almost always as a producer. Before this pandemic lockdown hap- work in this medium,” what should they do?
I wore many hats in that department and pened, the movie industry was having Daut: I think step one would be to get with
was even involved in bringing IMAX films issues getting audiences to fill theaters, someone who has produced for the medium
over to the fulldome so that people wouldn’t partially because there has never before before: someone who is conversant with
have to have two different systems in their been a time in our history where the po- the grammar of the cinematic language and
theaters. tential technology at home exceeds what how it transforms to work in that immer-
you’re going to have in a movie theater sive space. First see if the idea is right for
MovieMaker: In your opinion, what’s the experience. Most movie theaters do not an immersive dome experience. I would
next big step for fulldome? Is it just having project in 4K, but now you can buy a 4K next recommend that they talk with other
more audiences become aware of it, or for TV almost more affordably than a 1080p producers who have invested in these types
the films to move into more narrative-driven TV. There are even 8K televisions on the of experiences, to learn what the return has
realms? market, and it’s all kind of backwards— been. Learn what has and hasn’t worked to
Daut: By and large, domes where these films the home viewing experience is not as get that sense of where the market potential
can play exist in planetariums or science substandard anymore as it used to be. We is, and what the distribution model would
centers. Imagine if television was something be. There are different ways to approach
that you could only find in hospitals—what it. The traditional model is tough, where
would the programming look like? So that’s you’re trying to convince a theater to license
kind of what has happened in the fulldome your film for a period of time for a certain
world where most of the programming is as- amount. Should the deal be a revenue share
tronomical or science based—which is great, or a fixed license fee? When do you need to
but also somewhat limited. be able to recover your investment and what
There’s so much more that can be done, should your investment be? Lots of difficult
because really, if you think about it, the dome and practical questions right out of the gate.
is a space where people can be transported
into different environments, much like the MovieMaker: I remember an elementary
Holodeck in Star Trek. And so the capability school trip to a science center in Pittsburgh
for storytelling is really unlimited. But it re- to see a Lewis and Clark film on IMAX.
THE GROUNDBREAKING MESMERICA VISUAL
quires a different sensibility. The next big leap MUSIC SHOW DELIGHTS A SOLD-OUT AUDIENCE
Then someone like Christopher Nolan de-
is to leverage that community aspect of being cides to shoot and exhibit his blockbusters
transported. It’s almost like group VR. VR is in IMAX. These bigger names helped shep-
a compelling medium, but it’s not something need something else to drive an audience. herd that experience into a larger public
you easily share with friends. VR is analogous And I think this immersive space is some- consciousness. Do you see a similar path for
to saying, “Hey, let’s all go out together and thing that has that level of uniqueness and a fulldome?
each read a book. VR is much more of an has the capability to deliver an experience Daut: I do. I think the challenge there is
individualized experience.” to an audience that is unlike anything really the distribution issue in terms of what
But with the dome, you’re having that that cinema can offer. It’s just a matter of the theaters will book. IMAX has been suc-
shared experience with an audience together; the producer stepping up and saying, “I cessful in convincing many museum venues
yet you’re still having that level of immer- want to do this,” and then defining how to also show these Hollywood films. In the
sion that you would have in a headset. It’s that business model looks, and where fulldome world, that doesn’t really exist… yet.
next-level. A big next step is to figure out these experiences can play, because you There would be that extra barrier of figuring
how to leverage those storytelling experi- also have the barrier of these institutions out how to convince the museums and plan-
ences, to activate an audience in a way that it that are used to running scientific content etariums at large who have these fulldome
drives them from their homes, to experience hesitating to diverge into something that’s theaters to run “Hollywood” content.
something that’s more transformative than not 100 percent on mission. I think we’ve been underwhelming the
just seeing a movie. audience to some degree. Part of that is

CALLBOARD
that there’s a glut of content in the market

and most of the content is evergreen. New • DIGISTAR 6, THE
films don’t necessarily have the impact WORLD’S LEADING
DIGITAL PLANETARIUM
they have in just about any other space: SYSTEM RUNS A MES-
cinema, television, streaming, etc. Existing MERICA SHOW.
fulldome films are still licensed for many
many years, purely because of the film’s
topic, and the fact that they are designed
to last. For example, there’s a 15-year-old
film about black holes, but venues are still
licensing it, because it’s a topic that is still
fascinating to people. And that older film
may trump a new film that comes out that
has a topic that may not be as strong or
may not be as tied into the curriculum
that a particular planetarium wants to
promote or that a school group is going
to want to come to learn about. There’s a
lot of interesting barriers that have to be
dealt with. But I think a marquee title—one
that captures the audience’s attention and THE HOME some films that hit the 40- to 45-minute run-
ning time, but my instinct has always been
generates a solid buzz—could make a huge
difference. And that could open the door
VIEWING to let the topic guide the length of the film.
Most theaters are not hard and fast on turn-
to other similar experiences that people
would want to consume and that theaters
EXPERIENCE ing the theater over every half hour.
would be happy to have audiences come in IS NOT AS MovieMaker: Outside of runtimes, what
SUBSTANDARD
to experience. are some other fundamental ways fulldome
differs from a traditional movie?
ANYMORE AS Daut: The first thing you have to remember

is that you’re in a space that is surrounding
IT USED TO BE. you on all sides. You’re no longer a voyeur

in another room looking through a window.
SO WE NEED You’re actually inside the room where the
story takes place. This reality takes the
SOMETHING ELSE power of editing in traditional cinema off
the table. Because you, the audience, are
TO DRIVE AN actually in the space, the experience almost
AUDIENCE.”
feels theatrical. You’ve got to figure out how
you transition the audience from one scene
to another cleverly, because just changing
– MICHAEL DAUT shots from a close up to a wide shot to a
THE VERY LARGE TELESCOPE (VLT) IN CHILE, PHOTO- medium shot to a cutaway or an over the
GRAPHED AND PROJECTED IN 8K X 8K PIXELS. shoulder—those rules don’t really apply.
there are alternate takes you need to create The audience feels like they are there, so
or shots you need to produce, you can do shifting camera perspectives means moving
MovieMaker: Can VR content be ported this during the production to ensure that the audience unnaturally (and impossibly)
over to fulldome? the show is an optimized dome experience... from place to place inside the experience.
Daut: Absolutely. In VR, you’re building know that ahead of time. The story has to unfold in front of audi-
a sphere. In the dome, you’re building a But because you’re shooting spherical ences in a different sort of way, so editing
hemisphere, half of that content, so you as opposed to hemispherical, VR content requires a completely different mentality
have all the raw material there. You have adapts beautifully—you’re definitely pulling and sensibility.
the ability to choose where your horizon from the same type of source material and You’ve got to think about it differently
line sits in the dome, and the only concern the same format so to speak. because your audience is inside that experi-
would be the pacing and the way the ence with you, and they are moving with
experience would need to be adapted to MovieMaker: What are the average run- you through the experience. You have to de-
multiple people experiencing it at once, as times for these films? termine where they are: Is it a first-person
opposed to an individual. Daut: Typically fulldome films are about 22 experience for them? Is it a third-person
My advice would be to envision the to 25 minutes. This way the domes can turn experience? And if it is third person, how
dome setting for the film in advance. If over the theater every half hour. There are close are they to the thing that’s happening

on screen?
You have to be careful as a
moviemaker to warm up the au-
dience and almost not let them
ful about how you direct the
audience’s focus in that space,
so that it’s not too exhausting,
but yet, it’s wider and more CAN YOU
CLEAR
know that they’re already too immersive than if you’re just
close to the experience, so that looking forward the whole time. “BEST M
USIC
SUPERVIS
they can actively engage. Other- It’s a balance. Nomin ION“
wise you can overwhelm them I use three different parallels The Guildee from
of
SupervisoMusic
very quickly and make them for fulldome even though none rs
pull back, which is why some- of them exactly encapulate it.
ME NOW
times people fall asleep in the One is theater, one is obviously
dome. It’s not because they’re cinema, and the other one is
bored, but because they’re over- themed entertainment. When
whelmed. If the experience isn’t you’re designing attractions like
handled skillfully it can cause Harry Potter and the Forbidden
an audience to shut down. Journey, there is a certain path
MovieMaker: You’ve written

that the ride vehicle is going to
follow and things are going to Music Supervision,
Clearance & Strategy.
about the difficulty of leading be placed on that path through-
the audience from one visual fo- out the experience. You can’t
cal point to another organically vary from that. But the path
without them worrying about itself is very rich and how it Specializing in documentary and narrative film at
what they are missing. When I takes you from one thing to the all stages of distribution, traditional and new media
use VR or play video games, I next thing without breaking the advertising, branded content, social and digital,
end up swiveling around anx- physical time of the person in all forms of TV, podcasts, live/streaming/interactive
iously because I don’t want to the car, because you obviously and experiential media.
miss something important. can’t: time is time. Visit us at canyouclearmenow.com for all your
Daut: The audio structure of the And there are moments in temp/reach song quotes.
w
CanYouClearMeNow_1/4 Page_PRO_R1.indd 1 27/9/20 3:05 pm

CINEMA AND TELEVISION ARTS
AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO
• CAPTURING ELEMENTS FOR

A FULLDOME PRODUCTION
We transform artistic DEGREE PROGRAMS
sound effects and the placement fulldome just like in a film visions into thriving careers Cinema Art and Science BFA
of the narration is important like 1917, when you are in that in film, television, and Filmmaking BA
in leading the audience. If they continuous flow. emerging media. Interdisciplinary

hear something in a certain Creating an effective experi- Documentary BA
place, they’ll look over there, ence in the immersive dome HANDS-ON IMMERSION AND TRAINING
Television BA
but you also have to be careful, format requires combining cin-
INDUSTRY-STANDARD EQUIPMENT Television Executive Producing
because there have been some ematic choreography of camera
AND FACILITIES and Entrepreneurship BFA
experiments where filmmakers moves with the theatrical
use the whole dome as if it were awareness that the audience Cinema and Television
INTERNSHIP, EMPLOYMENT, AND Directing MFA
all in front of the audience, and is inside the space with you, NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES
people will get worn out when and the scope and complete Cinema and Television
they have to physically look over wrap-around transcendence EXTENSIVE ALUMNI NETWORK Creative Producing MFA
their shoulders. If it’s a stand-up of a theme park ride. Blend-
experience, that’s easy to do, but ing these three sensibilities
if you’re seated, it’s awkward to creatively is a winning formula
SHAPE WHAT’S NEXT
crane your neck behind you to for crafting content for the im- colum.edu/ctva
see things. You’ve got to be care- mersive dome. MM

FLASH FORWARD
• SHATARA MICHELLE FORD,

WRITER-DIRECTOR OF
TEST PATTERN .
that her film resonated with a diverse

audience, an outcome she never expected.
Test Pattern is the story of a Black woman
and her white boyfriend, driving across
Texas in search of a rape kit after she is
sexually assaulted. Until she wrote and di-
rected it, Ford says, “I was trying to follow
everybody else’s rules. And that simply
Shatara Michelle Ford
S HATARA MICHELLE FORD remembers
sitting in the audience of the 2019 New
wasn’t working.”
Growing up in rural Arkansas and Mis-
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF KINO LORBER
made Test Pattern by Orleans Film Festival, waiting to see souri, she had devoted hours to analyzing
rejecting old ways that if her film, Test Pattern, would win the Best
Narrative Feature Jury Award. She listened as
the Coen brothers’ screenplays. Her obses-
sion with film (“I was probably watching
are “designed to not the presenter described the winning film—not two movies a day for the first 16 years of
include me” realizing, at first, that it was her own. She burst my life”) and MTV’s Making the Video
into tears. fostered a desire to direct.
“I was so used to people not understanding “I’ve always loved movies, but never
BY HARPER L AMBERT
or caring, I couldn’t recognize my own film,” she thought I could make them,” she says. “I
explains. thought that’s something straight men do,
New Orleans felt like the first sign for Ford who were probably white.”
137_Flash Forward - Shatara Ford_DONE.indd 18 9/30/20 7:12 AM

FLASH FORWARD
After graduating from Pitzer College in “I just couldn’t get anybody to take me ated a bit, but there was also this narrative
2010, Ford enrolled in the screenwriting seriously because I’ve never done anything that it took Dee Rees a long time to make
MFA program at Royal Holloway, Univer- before,” she says. “Well, how do you expect something after Pariah.”
sity of London, where she hoped to channel me to do anything if you’re not going to give She continues: “I was starting to connect
her experiences as Black woman into her me a chance? I don’t have money, no one the dots. I thought, I’m not waiting. I can’t
art. Seeing Dee Rees speak in London after invests in shorts and pipelines are difficult do that.”
a screening of her film Pariah made her and nebulous.” It was late 2017. “The world was get-
realize: “This is what I’m actually supposed In 2016, she worked as director James ting darker, a little bit more serious.” She
to be doing.” Gray’s assistant on The Lost City of Z. After remembers thinking: “I do have something
But she felt misunderstood in the MFA shooting wrapped, she flew home and im- to say and I don’t want to waste time.”
program, where she says professors and mediately got to work writing and directing After four years of struggling to break
colleagues took issue with her penchant for “Afro Woman: 2016 CE,” the first in a series in, she and her producing partner, Pin-
writing Black female protagonists when race of four experimental shorts “starring Black Chun Liu, took out loans and “some-
wasn’t the focus of the story. women with little to no dialogue.” When thing like 16 credit cards” to supplement
“No one could give me notes because funding for the other three fell through, she $150,000 they had raised from an execu-
they didn’t understand or they weren’t shot a Hitchcock-inspired music video on tive producer and industry friends. Every-
open-minded to the fact there are other her own dime. one advised against the financial gamble,
realms of experience that a Black per- Through the projects, she also became but Ford was undeterred.
son could have,” she “Just because we
says, adding that one all do something a
professor told her, “If certain way doesn’t
you’re going to write mean we have to
about Black people, keep doing it, espe-
you should really think cially if it’s oppres-
about the movie Pre- sive or exclusive,” she
cious that just came says. “I’m not going
out.” to let people tell me
She began experi- that that’s not how
menting with racial it works. Because
ambiguity. One script, how it works was de-
to everyone’s dismay, signed to not include
didn’t reveal a charac- me.”
ter’s race until page 46. She had first
“There’s a way that learned about the
good screenplays, useful “personal, systemic
screenplays, should be and cultural” fac-
written for any director tors that prevent
to go on it. My scripts many sexual assault
didn’t really work that survivors from ac-
way,” she says, laugh- FORD BASED TEST PATTERN IN TEXAS TO EXAMINE THE STATE’S POLICIES. cessing rape kits in a
ing. She was criticized 2016 episode of Full
for writing scripts that Frontal with Saman-
didn’t put everything tha Bee. She believed
on the page. part of a network of “rad, queer women and she could use the problem to interrogate
“Maybe because I was always writing for POC,” many of whom collaborated on Test intersectional oppression.
myself and I didn’t know,” she muses. “I Pattern. Still, “real institutional, founda- “We all have relative levels of privilege,
always want some space in a script—do you tional support” failed to materialize, even but we also have compound oppression.
see why I sound like a director?” after Queen Elizabeth made the Black List, So for some people, the experience is just
Ford wrote Queen Elizabeth, a screen- the annual survey of executives’ favorite going to be more difficult, more nebulous,
play about a Black college graduate strug- unproduced scripts. Executives continued to more painful,” Ford adds.
gling to find her place in a post-recession balk at the idea of letting an unknown direc- She focused on Austin to “hammer
world.“Everyone likes the script. I cannot get tor handle her own project. home that there are actual policy reasons”
it made,” she recalls. One sticking point was “At that point, Moonlight had come out that places like Texas were dangerous
that she wanted to direct. “I had an executive and Barry Jenkins was talking about that for her protagonist, Renesha (Brittany
say to me directly, ‘You don’t have heat. No eight-year drought he had,” Ford recalls. S. Hall). References to Sandra Bland, a
one cares about you.’” Rees’ film Mudbound “had also reverber- Black woman who died in police custody

FLASH FORWARD
TEST PATTERN STARS

BRITTANY S. HALL AS
A YOUNG WOMAN WHO
TRAVELS ACROSS TEXAS
IN SEARCH OF A RAPE KIT.
in Texas in 2015, anchor the story in a Just as TV test patterns once helped test screening attendees and friends
precise cultural moment. analog viewers adjust their receivers, Test started texting Ford that they were
The Test Pattern dialogue is tense be- Pattern is designed to help audiences thinking about her movie again. “That
tween Renesha and her boyfriend, Evan process information and ideas. It succeeded made Pin-Chun and I think, ‘Oh shit,
(Will Brill). But tension also crackles in with test audiences who fervently debated maybe we need to go email some
silent rides to hospitals and the ticking white privilege, failures to stop sexual as- people, maybe we need to figure out
of clocks. Ford says removing words from sault, and other issues the film raises. The how to get this movie distributed.’”
her already sparse 35-page script added She adds: “In this pandemic, this
I’ve always loved

emotional honesty. racial uprising, this fascist moment
“As someone who’s felt like an out- that we’re in, we need to be looking at
movies, but never thought

sider, and spent a lot of time observing all of the systems,” she says. “There are
people, the quieter moments tell you a structural issues that are keeping ex-
I could make them.”

lot. So much of trauma is about how we periences and voices and perspectives
process in the moment, if we process at from being heard, and not just heard,
all.” Inspired by the films of Mike Leigh, but received.”
she encouraged her actors to use struc- In September, Kino Lorber an-
tured improvisation in long, spacious nounced plans to release Test Pattern
takes. in early 2021. It seemed that someone
“The way that it’s constructed is inten- film scored important wins at the Blackstar on the inside was finally listening. “If
tional; we’re supposed to be reflecting on Film Festival, where it premiered in August nobody was thinking that way, my film
our own behaviors and experiences,” she 2019, and in New Orleans in October. But it would still be sitting on Vimeo,” says
says. “We were all upset all the time. … didn’t sell. Ford. “And no one would see it. And I
On top of making an indie film, I knew it Then George Floyd’s death in May moved wouldn’t have a career.”
was asking a lot of people to hold that for the Black Lives Matter movement to the “I’m glad to not have to lift this
a long time.” center of the national dialogue. Suddenly, heavy load alone anymore.” MM

1
• SYNCHRONIC C0-
DIRECTORS AARON
MOORHEAD (L) AND
JUSTIN BENSON
SCREENWRITING
BY JUSTIN BENSON AND AARON MOORHEAD AS TOLD TO CALEB HAMMOND
J
ustin Benson and Aaron Moor- MOORHEAD: If you have any ads, by the supervisor about extremely specific things,
head are the co-directors of way, let us know. so that we can get the budget right. For us,
the genre-bending Synchronic, a lot of the prep happens way early. It hap-
BENSON: Aaron and I travel together a lot.
which stars Anthony Mackie and pens while we’re writing the script.
We work together a lot, and we’re always
Jamie Dornan as New Orleans
knocking around ideas. And then when we BENSON: In the movies that we make, there
paramedics who discover a bizarre plot in-
fall in love with one, we chase it down, and are oftentimes specific shots in the script
volving deaths from a new synthetic drug.
we generate the material after that. that the story doesn’t quite work without.
Benson wrote the screenplay. Here they talk
But you would never do that if you were
about how they met and became collabora- MOORHEAD: Those hit like lightning bolts.
writing a script to go sell on the market.
tors on films including Resolution (2012), Once somebody says the right sentence,
Spring (2014) and The Endless (2017). we’re just like, “that’s our next movie.” It’s MOORHEAD: Writing a spec, you have to know
that fast. that not just the person that you’re going to
JUSTIN BENSON: I was supposed to start
sell to, but their boss and their boss and their
medical school, and I had a year off before BENSON: Synchronic was written out of a
it would start. And I had previously been a
filmmaker for many years and struck out
at it, but I thought in this last year, that I
FOR US, A LOT OF THE PREP HAPPENS WAY EARLY.
would take every internship I could grab.
At one of them, I met Aaron, and that was
IT HAPPENS WHILE WE’RE WRITING THE SCRIPT.”
at Ridley Scott and Associates. We never
met Ridley Scott. But we bonded over lots
of stuff that’s too embarrassing to bring up,
memory of several trips to New Orleans. boss are going to like it. So its rough edges
but one thing that’s not embarrassing is
And once we got the script, we were pretty often have to get sanded down. Whereas
Stephen King.
happy with it, and we worked out with a something that’s written exactly for yourself,
AARON MOORHEAD: Love Stephen King. Lotta film festival that they would fly us through pretty much all the time, its artistic and com-
PHOTO BY PATTI PERRET / WELL GO USA ENTERTAINMENT
lowbrow stuff. Well no, Stephen King’s got New Orleans, on a layover on the way mercial value is in how strange it is. That’s
brows in both directions. home from the festival, so we could afford really just talking about smaller-budget films.
to go to New Orleans. We went to make Nobody wants a super palatable four-quad-
BENSON: And then we just started working
sure that these locations and these things rant $500,000 movie—it doesn’t exist. They
together more and more from the point of
actually still existed and weren’t a delusion want something with some edge, with some
trying to do spec ad commercials, because
of something we thought we remembered. uniqueness, with a voice. You can say that
we thought that the way you become a
you want that on every movie, but it’s frankly
director is to do commercials first. Then MOORHEAD: We go and retool the script
not true. A lot of time you come to movies for
you quickly learn that’s not where people based off of what we see. Actually by that
comfort, and that’s where the movies without
typically start any more. It’s where you go point, because we’re even sort of location
the edges come in. So that’s kind of fun about
to make a living once you already have a scouted, we can make a shot list, which
being able to choose to write a script for
career. means that before we’re even in New Or-
yourself. MM
leans, we’re talking with our visual effects
137_INTRO Screenwriting_DONE.indd 58 9/30/20 7:17 AM

WANTS
1
CHARLIE
KAUFMAN
SCREEN WRITIN G
I
DON’T KNOW HOW I came upon Iain Reid’s novel I’m Think-
ing of Ending Things. Maybe it was recommended to me online
based on my purchase history. I was looking for something to
make into a film that wouldn’t cost a lot to make. I thought I’d
MORE FILMS
have a better chance of getting financing for something that
already existed than for an original piece.
When I first read something for the sake of reading—which
I’m doing even if I’m looking to adapt something—it’s a little more ca-
ABOUT THE
sual. Once I decide that I’m going to take it on and make it into some-
thing else, I try to understand it on a deeper level. There, I come upon
things that I need to understand. If there’s something that’s not clear to
me, or that I don’t feel works for my purposes or resonates with me, then
IN-BETWEEN
I make some changes. That was the case in this, as in anything that I
would adapt. I have to understand what it is that I’m working with, and
it has to become mine.
I’m looking to understand who the people are. I’m also thinking about
MOMENTS
what they’re going to go through. And sometimes what I need them to go
through requires them to have a certain trait that I can then use in deter-
mining who they are. I need to understand who they are, and to be able to
justify to myself what it is that they’re doing.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARY CYBULSKI / NETFLIX

I cannot write a character who does something when I don’t understand
why they’re doing it. When those things come up in something I’m adapt-
The writer-director of I’m Thinking of Ending ing, I have to understand it. And if it needs to be changed for me to under-
stand it, or to clarify it for myself—not that it necessarily has to be clarified
Things on “writing walks” and adaptations for the audience—but so I understand, then I make those changes.
BY CHARLIE KAUFMAN Miscommunication as a Theme

When I directed Synecdoche, New York, I hired a production designer and
AS TOLD TO CALEB HAMMOND a DP, costume designer, and all of the different department heads. It was
our first production meeting, and it was astounding. These are all really
good people I loved working with, but the lesson for me was that everybody
137_Im Thinking of Ending Things - Charlie Kaufman_Second.indd 22 9/30/20 7:19 AM

JESSIE BUCKLEY AND CHARLIE
KAUFMAN ON THE SET OF I’M on a plane, and flying to another part
THINKING OF ENDING THINGS. of the country, don’t show that, because
that’s not interesting—everybody knows
how that goes.” That doesn’t seem like
good advice to me, because you can show
it in a way that’s fascinating, or works or
explores something, or creates a certain
know how to begin to do that. I need to be mood or energy, or allows people to
inspired to work; I need to have an idea. meditate on a concept. The idea that you
And so that’s what I wait for. would pick something, anything, to ex-
When I’m walking, if I decide that it’s a clude across the board from a movie that
writing walk, I’m thinking about the writing, you’re making seems ill-advised to me. If
and I have a notebook. It’s the safest thing you have a list like that, you’re basically
for me to do, so I don’t forget, which I do. making the movie that everybody else
I do think that there is stuff percolating would make.
when I’m not working even, and I’ve had You could and should—and people
that experience again and again where I’m probably have—make movies that only
blocked and something happens a month have the in-between moments. To me,
later in my thought process that frees things that’s a fascinating thought, to explore
up. I started to trust that it will, rather than that. Plot isn’t everything. Moving some-
panic about it. thing forward isn’t everything. It seems
I write one draft, but I’m constantly like anything that you do, you should
going back and making changes as I dis- sit with as a filmmaker, as a writer, as a
cover new things. So it’s an evolving draft. director, and think about what it is that
By the time I’m finished with it, I feel like you’re exploring here. “What am I doing?
had a different idea of what this movie should I’ve got the script that I want. So I don’t What am I thinking about? And how do
look like. And so it was valuable to have this know how many total drafts that makes I explore this notion?” Anything that you
conversation with everybody and for them to it, but it’s not like I have tons of previous do with that intent is valid. Even if it’s a
hopefully end up on the same page, which I drafts of I’m Thinking of Ending Things. movie where nothing happens—I think
think is what happened. This script in a drawer somewhere—this we need more, not less, of that. We have
That was a lesson about what your expecta- thing I turn in is the only thing that I’ve plenty of the other stuff. And everybody
tions are—and whether you’ve communicated worked on. knows how those movies go, and they’ve
something properly to people with your work, served their purpose. But they don’t leave
with your script. But I do think those kinds A Note on Airplane Travel you changed, I don’t think. MM
of problems are easier than interpersonal I remember a screenwriting class in col-
communication, which is always a question lege where the teacher said something like, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is now
of, from my mind, people not saying what “If someone’s going to the airport, getting streaming on Netflix.
they mean. And that’s what’s interesting to
me about writing dialogue: trying to recreate
and translate that experience, that I have in
actual life, into a piece of fiction.
Writing Walks
Walking is really helpful for me in terms of
figuring out things, and it also gets me offline.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARY CYBULSKI / NETFLIX
Although I started doing long walks well

before there was a possibility of being online,
back in the early days of my writing. I don’t
have a writing routine, but deadlines are help-
ful for me... or not even deadlines, but just the
idea that I’ve been commissioned for some-
thing, and I have to turn something in. I’m not
like Stephen King or somebody who gets up
at six o’clock in the morning and writes until
• JESSE PLEMONS, JESSIE BUCKLEY, TONI COLLETTE AND DAVID THEWLIS CONTINUE THINGS.
lunchtime every day, whether I have ideas
or not—that doesn’t work for me. I wouldn’t
137_Im Thinking of Ending Things - Charlie Kaufman_Second.indd 23 9/30/20 7:20 AM

1 SCREENWRITING
I FOUND A
POSITIVE WAY
TO WRITE.
I DIDN’T USE IT FOR THE NEST
I
Sean Durkin took a STARTED SLOWLY WRITING the U.S. to England and how they try to stay
The Nest in 2014 when I left together through turmoil. The script took
very personal journey New York and moved back to various forms, reflective of what I was going
for The Nest, often London. The script accompa- through in my life at the time. Because I was
nied me through this major life working on other things, I would write a
setting the script aside and change and over the next five draft, and then take a full year before look-
learning about his characters years. It was always the main ing at it again. So I was constantly coming
in the process script that I was writing, but I also had
other films I was working on that didn’t
back to it with fresh eyes in a way that I’ve
never experienced before.
happen, for different reasons. This was When I write, I’m constantly feeling out
BY SEAN DURKIN always the thing I came back to. character, the truth of interactions, and the
AS TOLD TO CALEB HAMMOND I was shooting the British TV series truth of the moment. When I’m writing a
Southcliffe in 2012 and it reminded me of script, I might be stuck on an idea: “This
my life in London when I lived there as has to happen and this has to happen,”
COURTESY OF IFC FILMS
a kid in the ’80s. I moved with my family and then I put it down and come back to
from London to New York in the ’90s, and it much later. In the time in between, I’m
felt a really stark atmospheric difference always thinking about the character. I’ll be
in the two places at the time. I wanted to laying in bed at night and realize, “Oh yeah,
explore that. That’s how it started. actually, this happens.” And so more truthful
The film is about a family moving from things come to the surface, as opposed to
137_The Nest_First_DONE.indd 24 9/30/20 10:09 AM

ADEEL AKHTAR (L) AND JUDE
LAW ARE CO-WORKERS IN LONDON
IN THE NEST
Having
good strong
voices that are
emotionally
supportive,
but not always
exactly like
yours, is a good
way to test
yourself.”
SEAN DURKIN BROKE OUT WITH HIS DEBUT FEATURE MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE IN 2011.
HE RETURNS WITH HIS SOPHOMORE FEATURE ALMOST A DECADE LATER WITH THE NEST .
sponse to that. Now, I don’t let myself write
too soon. I think writing pages too soon
can damage the process. So I’ve developed
this method where I will start a project,
me trying to follow a plot or an idea. That into production making those changes. The I’ll have an idea, and I’ll keep a notebook
space allows me to not be stuck on an idea funny thing is, going through all of that, I in which I’ll handwrite for months. I’ll
or on a preconceived idea that I had about came out with a writing method that works handwrite ideas: scene ideas, character
how it had to be, or what I need to touch for me. I’ve written two scripts with this ideas, research, anything. After I fill a book,
upon. Time allows the real truth to surface. new method. I found a form that is much I go back through and circle and break it up
more effective and positive. But I didn’t and number these things that I think could
Don’t Write Too Soon write The Nest that way. be either scenes or moments. At the end of
The first few years of working on The The reason I ended up taking those that process, I might have 150 scenes, which
Nest, I was going through a lot of changes in breaks writing The Nest was because I wrote I put on notecards and order into a struc-
my life, I was working on a lot of different too soon—I was eager. I would have all ture. I keep working on that structure, and
things, I was actively trying to get several these ideas, and I’d write pages, and I’d be only when I really have something, I start
other movies off the ground. done with the drafts, and I’d be like, “Here writing pages. I find this to be a much more
On the other side of that chaos, I finally it is.” And then I would take time away and productive way to work, and it also takes
saw the movie I actually wanted to make look back: “That’s not actually what I want the computer out of the process, which I
and then spent the last year before we went to do.” I developed this new form in a re- also find helpful.

1 SCREENWRITING
WRITING FOR A REACTION

It’s funny. When I started writing fic-
tion in college, I never got a good reac-
tion from it. Then I went to film school
and wrote short scripts—and I wrote a
lot of short scripts—and it was always
the same thing, I never got a reaction
from my writing. So I said, “I’m going
to write something so I have something
to make.” And that’s how I approached
writing Martha Marcy May Marlene: I’m
just going to write so that I have a film
to make. And it became a script that
everyone responded to—the first piece of
writing I ever had a real response from.
Maybe before I was trying to do too
much, and I actually found a story with
Martha that felt truthful, that touched
something in me, and therefore touched
something in people. In that process I
discovered that I could write. It was just
about finding something that I really
cared and was passionate about.
BE OPEN
When you’re creat-
ing, you need to be
open, and you have
to be open to the idea
that making films—
even though being
a writer-director
requires a very singu-
lar ambition and vi-
CARRIE COON AND JUDE LAW ARE A COUPLE IN
sion—is also entirely CRISIS IN SEAN DURKIN’S THE NEST
collaborative. To do it
well, you have to sur-
round yourself with
the right people. For
me, this comes down
to instincts at all
times. If you’re talking about working with you, even if in the end you might go back this is more challenging than having
someone, how do they talk about work? to what you have. The whole process of everyone around you say yes.
How do they talk about film? How do they making a film is ultimately about know-
talk about fiction? How do they talk about ing what you want it to be, and constantly LET THE SPACES SPEAK TO YOU
acting? Getting to know someone and how testing that boundary. Because there are Sometimes there are key sequences,
they think should provide insight into a lot of people involved in the process, where I say, “This is going to be from far
whether they would be a good creative there’s a lot of voices, there’s a lot of pres- away. This is going to be a zoom. This is
bounce board for you. sures, and there are a lot of ways to get going to be close-up and handheld.” Some-
Being able to take a different opin- away from what you want to make. Having times I feel it and write it in the script.
ion that tests your own is crucial. Have good strong voices that are emotionally Sometimes there’s a bit of tone in the
someone you trust who can say, “Maybe it supportive, but not always exactly like description—thinking about what some-
should be the opposite way.” As a writer, it yours, is a good way to test yourself. Find thing should feel like. But then I’m always
can be healthy to be forced to say, “Actu- what it is you want to make and refine wide open once we get there and we see
ally, no, this is right.” Allow them to push your voice and your clarity, even though the space. Once you step into a space, you

MÁTYÁS ERDÉLY LENSED THE NEST ON 35MM FILM STOCK.
trade in London. There was a lot of opti- the house. You’d go in these houses—the
mism and excitement pre-crash, and there biggest houses I’ve ever been in in my
were a lot of people making a lot of money life—and there were no hallways. It was a
around that time. strange thing, which I assume was a way
The house was key to the whole film. to insulate. That was tricky.
We wanted something that was beyond The other thing is that a lot of these
the means of your typical commodi- places are abandoned and decrepit. We
• THE CAMERAS ARE ABOUT TO ROLL ties broker working in London, living in wanted something that had the potential
ON CARRIE COON IN THE NEST Surrey, which is a pretty common com- to be extraordinary, and we didn’t want
mute—we needed to push it to that next the family to move into some completely
level. James Price was my art director on decrepit place. We wanted a place that
Southcliffe and Mátyás Erdély shot South- has some warmth, has some potential for
cliffe and the what Rory sees as
three of us started this ideal.
talking about the That was some-
have an idea, but to get the best out of the house as soon as thing at the center of
space you have to let it grant you opportu- I started writing Jude and my conver-
nities you didn’t know were there. I walk The Nest. James, sations about Rory’s
into a space and throw everything out and who is incredibly character. Rory has
let it talk to me again. See what a window knowledgeable on this warmth and love
offers you outside. See what the stairs of- British architec- and generosity, and
fer you below. See what the floors are like. ture, helped feed it gets skewed by this
A location can be so alive that I don’t want into what the ambition that isn’t
to hang onto the writing. house should be. even his to begin
We’d go look with—where does
CHOOSING A TIME PERIOD at a house that THE NEST WRITER-DIRECTOR SEAN DURKIN ON it come from? How
SET WITH JUDE LAW
I chose to set The Nest in 1986 because I on paper would much of it is from
wanted it to be pre-crash and I wanted it to look amazing. We society? How much
be at a time when The Big Bang occurred would get there, of it is a response to
in London, where everything was deregu- and it would look great on the outside, his childhood? And we wanted to explore
lated, which made England into a global but you’d go inside and there would be that in a complicated way, and the house
market. It’s a time where Rory (Jude Law) no open space. I really wanted open needed to reflect this same warmth. MM
comes in and pitches himself as this perfect space. I wanted to be able to see through
person to merge the U.S. and the UK. All multiple rooms at a time. In The Nest you The Nest is available on demand on
these American companies were starting to can see two doors in almost every shot in November 18, from IFC Films.

1 SCREENWRITING
THE
STORY INSIDE
How French writer-director Florian
Zeller stayed almost entirely
in one apartment—and his
main character’s mind—
to create a vivid, transfixing
story of dementia.
B Y F L O R I A N Z E L L E R AS TOLD TO TIM MOLLOY
A FTER FLORIAN ZELLER published

his 2002 debut novel, Artificial Snow,
at age 22, he was invited to write a
libretto for an opera, which helped him
realize his love of writing for the stage.
grandmother, and everyone has to deal
with this kind of dilemma: What do you
do with the people you love when they
part of the narrative and to question what
they’re witnessing and to be asking ques-
tions all the time.
Because we are basically in the main
start to lose their bearings? Everyone
That led to a thriving career as a play- is concerned by this issue. So maybe character’s head, we are starting to lose
wright that includes The Father, the story we could share it. Because when you go our own bearings. The film is like a
of a daughter whose father has dementia, through difficult or painful experiences, puzzle. And you can play with the pieces,
but refuses help. Zeller has just made his most of the time, you feel as if you are the you can play with all the combinations,
but in a way it will never work, because
PHOTO BY SEAN GLEASON / SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

directorial debut with his astonishing only one to experience it.
screen adaptation of The Father, starring The thing is, I really didn’t want to tell a piece will always be missing.
Anthony Hopkins in the lead role, and that story from the outside. We can feel
Olivia Colman as the daughter. It unfolds empathy only if we try to tell the story from Stay Indoors
from the perspective of Hopkins’ character, the inside. And I thought it would be excit- When you think about adapting a
Anthony, who tries to hold onto order as it ing for me as a writer to play with the audi- play, the first advice you get is always to
slips away. — MM ence, and with the feeling of disorientation. try to go outside and to create outdoor
I was raised by my grandmother. She I wanted to create a complicated structure scenes, to make it more cinematic. And
was a bit like my mother, and I was very in the narrative, to make the audience feel it’s a temptation. But in this precise case,
close to her. And when I was 15, she as if they were going through a labyrinth. I made the decision not to do that, and
started to suffer from dementia. The play Because I really like to put the audience to dare to stay in almost one room, in
The Father has a very universal theme, in a very active position—not just to ask one apartment. And I made a decision to
meaning that everyone has a father or them to sit and to watch the story, but to be shoot the whole film in a studio, in order
137_The Father - Florian Zeller_DONE.indd 58 9/30/20 7:28 AM

explains to you that this is not possible, it
means that potentially it is possible.
So I just tried. I sent the script to his
agents. And one day, I received a call
from his team letting me know that he
wanted to meet with me. So I took a
plane to Los Angeles to have breakfast
with him.
You’re always impressed when you
are meeting with someone like Anthony
Hopkins, but at the same time, after two
minutes, I knew that he would be easy to
work with because he’s so intelligent, of
course, but also humble. Which is to me
the signature of the greatest.
“Humble” means he leaves room for
collaboration. And during all the shoot-
ing, he allowed me to make the film I
really wanted to make—every shot, every
angle, every situation, everything was
exactly what I wanted to make. And so he
gave this to me, which was a real gift. If
you don’t like the film, it’s really entirely
my fault.
It was the same with Olivia Colman,
because she’s also very humble and very
dedicated to the story. I had seen her on
stage a few times in London and have al-
• OLIVIA COLMAN AND ANTHONY ways adored her as an actress. I think she’s
HOPKINS IN FLORIAN ZELLER’S the greatest English actress. And also, she
THE FATHER . has something magical about her, in that
as soon as you meet her, you love her. And
we needed to create empathy with that
character immediately.
to be able to use the sets to create this ing the movie—because everything starts
feeling of disorientation in the audience. with a dream—the first and only face that Advice
So at the beginning of the story, we came to my mind was Anthony’s. I had When you write, when it’s too pain-
are in an apartment, which is Anthony’s the intuition that he would be absolutely ful, when it doesn’t work, it means that
apartment, there is no doubt about it. powerful in it, probably because we know you’re not going in a good direction.
We recognize his space, his furniture, his him through all his parts as someone who Something has to be easy, because it’s
knickknacks. And, step by step, we begin is always in control, very intelligent. And a lot about dialogue, and dialogue goes
to doubt where we are. Small details in I thought it would be powerful to see him fast. But at the same time, it is painful,
the design change. From scene to scene, I in a world where intelligence is not useful because you have to fight against yourself
PHOTO BY SEAN GLEASON / SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
changed proportions, I moved a wall, and anymore, to see him losing control. In a all the time, against the fear.
the furniture. You recognize a painting, world that is very rational, but with no I think I have no particular advice be-
but it’s not at the same place. In the first logic anymore. cause I think that every writer has their
10 first minutes of The Father, we see the And that’s the reason why when I wrote own process. You just have to follow your
apartment is green and yellow, and step the script, the character’s name is An- own process and to discover who you
by step, we go to blue. And then the blue thony, because it was a way for me to be are. And there’s only one way to discover
becomes lighter and lighter. So it’s like connected with him. And to make him un- who you are: to try and try and try, and
traveling while staying in the same very derstand that it was really written for him. suddenly something appears. And this is
same place. It was not an easy dream to fulfill, because you. MM
it’s my first feature film, and I’m French,
Anthony Hopkins and he’s Anthony Hopkins. But my feeling The Father is scheduled to open in theaters
When I started to dream about mak- was that until someone comes to you, and on December 20, from Sony Pictures Classics.
137_The Father - Florian Zeller_DONE.indd 29 9/30/20 7:28 AM

1
SCREENWRITING
YOU
DON’T
HAVE
TO WRITE
AT FOUR IN THE MORNING
The Forty-Year-Old Version star Radha Blank found her own approach to plays. I couldn’t afford the hundred-dollar
ticket to see them on Broadway, but most
writing, with support from friends willing to read her scripts aloud of them had been archived, so I could go
there and study.
B Y R A D H A B L A N K AS TOLD TO MOVIEMAKER There are little things that I’ve devel-
oped over the years, some on my own,
and some from reading a book like The
Art of Dramatic Writing, by Lajos N. Egri,
R ADHA BLANK WROTE, DIRECTED, was a massive cinephile. So, I grew up on which Fred Hudson, God bless his soul,
produced and stars in The Forty- John Cassavetes and Sidney Lumet and Hal introduced me to when I was 19 or 20.
Year-Old Version, a semi-autobio- Ashby. Kathleen Collins I knew about, but He wrote a film called The Miseducation
graphical film in which she plays a strug- I didn’t see her films until later. Film was a of Sonny Carson, and it was his only film.
PHOTOCREDIT: JEONG PARK / NETFLIX
gling New York playwright who breaks out huge pastime for our family, but it took me a But what he’s really known for in some
as a rapper named RadhaMUSprime just second to call myself a screenwriter because circles is founding the Frederick Douglass
before turning 40. In this piece, she talks I was exploring so many aspects of writing. Creative Arts Center, which is no longer
about her writing process. — MM A lot of my mentors I’ve never met, and there, with Budd Schulberg, the writer of
I was raised by two struggling artists a lot of them are no longer with us. And so On the Waterfront.
in New York, and so I saw the many ways I’ve had to create my own curriculum, like The Art of Dramatic Writing changed my
a career in the arts could work, or not watching tons and tons of films. I’ve been life, because it taught me to invest time in
work. But I’d always been writing, and I broke for most of my life, but I would go a character. If you know who a character
was always encouraged to write. My mom to the Lincoln Center archives and look at is, you know how they’re going to react to
137_40-Year-Old Version - Radha Blank_DONE.indd 30 9/30/20 7:31 AM

RADHA BLANK WRITES, DIRECTS AND STARS IN
THE 40-YEAR-OLD VERSION.
SHOOTING THE FILM IN BLACK AND WHITE HELPS

INVOKE A SENSE OF ‘90S HIP-HOP NOSTALGIA AND
THE NEW YORK INDIE FILM BOOM.
called you twice. I know what this means

you’re in one of those holes. Please wash,
please eat, take care of yourself.”
One thing I can’t live without in the
process of writing is hearing the voices
a house being on fire or someone getting breakthrough for me was realizing, in that of the characters. And so when I’ve heard
hit by car, or there being a pandemic. The process, that research is writing. the voices a couple of times, then I slow
book really helped me create characters And then the smartest thing I did, which down, because it’s time to have actors em-
from inside-out. But the biggest part was I had never done before this point, was body them. I don’t necessarily mean profes-
just accepting what my own process would write an outline. It changed everything. I sional actors, but friends who can read a
be, as opposed to comparing it to how was able to write that play in two days. Oh role. It tells me so much about what’s there.
other people arrive at a screenplay. One big my God. I’m not saying that that is ever If after a while I’m like, “Okay, they need to
thing that I think is important for writers going to be everyone’s outcome, but having stop talking,” that means I’ve overwritten
is to not compare their process to others. the outline, and then having the research the scene. Or if the actor is stumbling over
When I was in my mid- to late-twen- just kind of spill into and the words, then the lan-
ties, I was in a relationship with someone
who got up and wrote every day at four
spread out across that outline,
was life-changing for me. I don’t guage isn’t loose enough.
I cannot write without
o’clock in the morning. I’d reached out for
him and he wasn’t there. He was at his
And so that’s a practice I’ve
taken on. schedule a readings. When I’ve had
one or two of those, I go
desk. I was the mistress, the writing was
the wife. And for a time, I started emulat-
And the other thing that has
become the Holy Grail for me is particular back in and finish the
work.
ing his process. But then when I read my
work, it was a piece of shit.
knowing how I want the movie
to end. Knowing how I want time... I feel When I got my first
screenwriting job, and
I was a standup comic at one point. I
was doing solo performance work. I was a
the movie to end becomes its
own GPS. Even if the ending like writing is got fired off the second
draft, I was just like,
rapper, which turned out to be helpful for
The Forty-Year-Old Version. I was a play-
changes, I’ve done all of this
work to get there. a calling.” “What gives? I have to
do something to take
-
wright for many years struggling in New When I was a younger writer, my career back. I’m just
York: I’ve only had one major production, it was very much about what RADHA BLANK going to do a web series,
even though I’ve written a dozen plays. I I was writing down. Now, it’s I’m going to shoot, do
was a teaching artist and I loved work- more about going out into the everything myself, I’m go-
ing with kids, but I always saw that as a world and just absorbing. I ing to star in it. And this
temporary thing: One day I’d have some don’t schedule a particular time, because way, no one can fire me. and I’ll be my own
kind of breakout as a storyteller. to be honest, many times, I feel like writ- boss.” And so I started writing a web series
One of my plays was called Casket ing is a calling. When it grabs me, I don’t with me playing myself as a playwright,
Sharp. It’s about this guy who takes over move. trying to have a big break before her 40th
his dead father’s funeral parlor, and he So I may not sit down and write for birthday. And she then decides to become
ends up becoming a mediator between weeks at a time. But when it does come, I a rapper.
a dead boy’s gang family and his mother hand myself over to it. It could be 72 hours, About two weeks before we went to
over how he should be buried. I did it could be longer than that. My mom used shoot the first two episodes, which we were
months and months of research, and one to call sometimes and then say, “Okay, I going to use for crowdfunding, my mom

1 SCREENWRITING
• BLANK’S FILMMAKING
DEBUT ALSO MARKS THE
ACTING DEBUT OF OSWIN
BENJAMIN.
passed away. And as you can imagine, it pilot. And then I thought, no one’s going to plane laughing so loud. People were look-
devastated my life. She was my best friend. produce this thing. Nobody knows who the ing at me.”
We had the same birthday. And I was going hell I am. And then I just got the notion: I had the experience first at the Freder-
to call it quits where art is concerned. I It’s a feature film, a feature film that I could ick Douglass Center, all those years ago,
was going to become a social worker. keep independent and on the fringes. wanting to be a writer. And now it’s again
Thank God I didn’t. I probably saved I’ve been friends with Lena Waithe for been proven to me: my most valuable
more children by not becoming a social many years, and at one point, she just resource is my community.
worker. said, “Why don’t you let me help you As we all keep facing the uncertainty of
But I had all of this music as a compan- make your movie?” And that was it. And the future in front of us, let’s keep remind-
ion piece to the web series. So I started here we are. ing ourselves that the past is in front of us
going out and performing as Radha- I didn’t know The Forty-Year-Old Version too. And those we trust and risk and fight
MUSprime, and it was cathartic. I got to was a comedy until Franklin Leonard, the and dream with are the ones with whom we
connect with an audience of women who founder of The Black List, read it. Franklin build. MM
were of a certain age. It’s a cabaret act was the first person I shared the script
that I’ve done for a couple of years, very with who wasn’t in my little tiny circle of The Forty-Year-Old Version is available to
self-deprecating, but all through the lens of writer friends. And he said, “I was on the stream on Netflix on October 6, 2020.
hip-hop. And when I went out and did that
for a couple of years, and came back and
looked at the web series, it just felt a little
too pedestrian. So I was just trying to find
ways to keep the story fresh, but it also felt
like at that time, and this was like 2016,
an online web series felt like a millennial’s

game. And so I started writing for TV. And
I turned this web series into a 30-minute
BLANK DREW ON HER REAL-LIFE EXPERIENCE

AS A RAPPER FOR THE FILM.

2
J
PRE-PRODUCTION/
DEVELOPMENT
USTIN BENSON: I was saying that
I just grabbed every internship I
could. And so at one I met Aaron
and the other one, I was forced by
the company to be David Lawson’s
production assistant. I was a must-hire. And so
Dave had to hire me as a PA on these jobs and I
was probably a terrible PA. But I met Dave and
• (L-R) JUSTIN BENSON, AARON MOORHEAD,
JAMIE DORNAN AND ANTHONY MACKIE ON
THE SYNCHRONIC SET
BY JUSTIN BENSON, AARON MOORHEAD AND DAVID LAWSON AS TOLD TO CALEB HAMMOND
We like to rehearse on the actual set, for

quite a long time. The best night of a play is
never opening night. And it’s never rehearsal
night. It is normally a few months in. So we
want to see that performance and we want
to see that energy before the camera’s rolling,
because then we know it exists. And then we
just say, let’s recapture that, rather than trying
MOORHEAD: We find that our pre-production
is way more sleepless than our production. A
smooth production is really important to us
if we can get it. We don’t have personalities
that thrive on chaos at all. When everybody
understands each other—that works very nicely
for us.
BENSON: Is Synchronic our most scaled-up film?
I met Aaron and then we all to figure our way through
Absolutely. Is it as big as someone might think,
came together.
WHEN THE it as we go.
And then also, there’s
given it’s starring Anthony Mackie and Jamie
AARON MOORHEAD: I don’t Dornan? Probably not.
even know exactly how this CLOCK IS TICKING three of us. We have to be
in line. And we wouldn’t MOORHEAD: Yes, technically there’s some trucks
fits in, but for us, the writing
and development process is AND THE GAFFER’S work together if in
general, our brains didn’t
that we normally don’t have, the meals are
a little bit more delicious. But beyond that,
exactly the same.
BENSON: Filmmakers operate
ON HIS FIFTH work the same way, and
we didn’t have the same
there’s not that much difference.
LAWSON: The meals were a lot more delicious.
in wildly different ways, in
terms of what works best for
CIGARETTE, YOU tastes and we weren’t gen-
erally just always trying to MOORHEAD: They’re not Costco.
you, creatively. For us, it’s less
about putting ourselves in a
DON’T WANT TO make the same movie. …
When the clock is ticking
LAWSON: One of the things that worked really
well on Synchronic is that because in general
situation where you have to
just totally run on instinct.
STILL BE WORKING and the gaffer’s on his fifth
cigarette, you don’t want
we prepare so thoroughly, we could also dis-
seminate information to a larger crew pretty
BENSON: If you looked at our OUT WHAT YOU to still be working out
what you really want.
thoroughly. When you have an eight-person
shot lists from Resolution, crew, everybody can get on the same page,
Spring, or The Endless, the REALLY WANT.” DAVID LAWSON: Honestly, super easy. But when you’re talking to depart-
written shot list is almost the we can sit and talk about ment heads, who then have to talk to their
COURTESY OF WELL GO USA ENTERTAINMENT
movie exactly. movies forever, the three of us love mov- best boys who then have to talk to the crew, it
ies, we love each other, so it’s like, let’s just just lengthens that process. But it was an easy
MOORHEAD: One of the big things that’s crazy
sit around and talk and figure this out, and transition into doing that, because it’s how we
important to us is rehearsal. We feel like we
that way, we have a very clear plan. When prepare anyway.
find what we want out of the movie, basically,
somebody asks me something or somebody
as we round out the script. And that’s kind of MOORHEAD: And the goal, by the way, is a good
asks Justin something, or somebody asks
the movie that we try to execute. And rehearsal movie. The goal is not smoothness. But we do
Aaron something, all three of us give the
for us is where we already know about the believe that allowing the brain the headspace
same answer. I usually don’t have as intricate
movie, so we start learning about the actual to not just be solving logistical problems, but
an answer as Justin or Aaron, but we at least
production, where you start seeing the color of to start it working subconsciously on artistic
know what the plan is.
the walls, and all that. problems, lets you make a better movie. MM
138_INTRO Development_DONE.indd 58 9/30/20 7:38 AM

• TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET AS
PAUL ATREIDES AND CHARLOTTE
RAMPLING AS REVEREND
MOTHER MOHIAM IN DUNE .
2 D EVELOPME NT
HARS
PHOTO BY CHIABELLA JAMES
34
137_Dune-Patrice Vermette_Third.indd 34 9/30/20 7:42 AM

RSH Production designer Patrice Vermette teams
up once again with Denis Villeneuve, this time
to create the expansive juxtaposed worlds that
WORLD
make up Frank Hebert’s Dune.
B Y P A T R I C E V E R M E T T E
PHOTO BY CHIABELLA JAMES
35

2 DEVELOPMENT
T
HE JOURNEY STARTS on the same cultural background, we’re the When I start to plan the production
Caladan. The members of the same age, and we share a love of science design for a film, I think of a bass line.
House of Atreides are preparing fiction books from our childhoods. Ever since our first feature film collabora-
to leave their home planet, as the But there would be little of that. He tion a decade ago, we’ve continuously tried
emperor has given them the con- popped a question that would define the to find the right balance between subtle
trol of the remote and dangerous planet of course of my life for the next two years. but yet strong visuals, focusing on the “less
Arrakis where they will be taking charge of Dune marks our fifth and most epic is more” to find the right language. A bass
spice mining… endeavor yet. line mostly stays in the background, punc-
Or perhaps it begins in 2018, on a snowy First published in 1965, Frank Herbert’s tuating when needed.
day in Montreal. I remember a text mes- novel Dune had been Denis’ fantasy project My first step was to read Dune again.
sage from Denis Villeneuve, asking if I’d since he first dreamed of becoming a film The Dune universe is so rich with ideas and
like to grab breakfast at one of our favorite director. The fact that he wanted us to col- details that it was important for me to go
spots. I had known Denis since the mid- laborate together to bring his vision to life back to the roots, to get a solid grasp on the
90s, when we were part of the same small was an immense privilege, one that I would material and rediscover those worlds with
independent film community. We hadn’t not take lightly. I felt a huge responsibility the eyes of my inner child.
seen each other in a while. We come from to him, and to the fans. Set thousands of years in the future, the
It is here where spice is found. He

who controls it, controls
the universe.”
PHOTOCREDIT
PHOTOCREDIT
36

book tells the story of Paul Atreides, who is Studios in Budapest, our
forced to choose between following his duty creative team also had the
or joining a new generation banding together privilege and support of
to fight for a better world. working with an immensely
One of the first things that struck me was talented and passionate lo-
that we needed to ground the story into cal crew. And now we were
realistic settings to help the audience believe ready for Caladan.
in the extraordinary elements. This would
mean making the settings as immersive as Talking with Denis, it was
possible, and rallying everybody. Fortunately, important to give Caladan
we all wanted to make the same movie. Dune a feeling of melancholia. I
would feel like a destination that we would shared with him the idea of
all be exploring together. the Canadian autumn season
Every set had to be well-planned, and on the coast: misty, over-
scenes storyboarded to carry on with the cast skies define dramatic PRODUCTION DESIGNER PATRICE VERMETTE ON THE SET OF DUNE .
plan. As we set up our main base at Origo coastal mountain ranges and
cliffs. The forests are tall with
Norwegian Pines. It isn’t too cold, but we are tances, between rock formations, to help
definitely heading toward the end of a cycle... them cross the desert safely, even though
or the beginning of a new one. The location it would make their journey longer. These
that telegraphed these emotions best ended formations would become safe havens,
up being the North West Coastline of Nor- just like small islands in the ocean.
way. We felt a balance between the architec- Just as the rock formations protect
ture of our castle and nature. the fremen, we also thought that the
The juxtaposition with Arrakis, also different colonists passing through
known as Dune, is extreme. It is a harsh Arrakeen would have used the moun-
world, bigger than anything Paul Atreides tains as natural anchors to protect their
has ever witnessed. The entire planet is a infrastructures. With winds going up to
desert with no natural precipitation. It is 525 miles per hour, you would definitely
here where spice is need something
found. He who con- grounded.
trols it, controls the With this in
universe. mind, I started
Before starting any exploring online
sketches and concept the different des-
art for Arrakeen, the ert options that
main city of Arrakis, the world had to
I presented mood offer. Some were a
boards containing lot more produc-
reference pictures tion friendly than
of ancient Ziggurat JOSH BROLIN AS GURNEY HALLECK. others. The goal
Architecture, power was to find a
dams, Soviet and Brazilian Brutalism, country that would give us the epic sand
• TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET AS PAUL glaciers taking over valleys, marble mines, dunes landscapes, as well as the perfect
ATREIDES AND REBECCA FERGUSON AS as well as World War II bunkers from the rock formations. We physically scouted a
LADY JESSICA ATREIDES IN WARNER
BROS. PICTURES’ AND LEGENDARY
Western European coastline. These images few countries, and decided that the best
PICTURES’ DUNE . became the cornerstones of the architec- visuals could be attained by splitting the
ture and design of the movie. It was time desert scenes between Jordan and Abu
to start sketching ideas and to work on the Dhabi.
concept art. Soon the film will come to audiences,
Early in the process, Denis and I agreed the people who, like Denis and I, read
that even though the book is titled Dune, Dune years ago, imagined it in our
we needed, on a storytelling level, moun- minds, and will, soon, leave their home
tains and interesting rock formations. We planet for a while, and see the one we’ve
PHOTOS BY CHIABELLA JAMES
imagined that the indigenous population made. MM

PHOTOCREDIT
PHOTOCREDIT
of Arrakis—fremen—would rarely venture

across the vast open desert. We figured Dune opens in theaters on October 1, 2021,
they would probably travel shorter dis- from Warner Bros. Pictures.
T3 K7
137_Dune-Patrice Vermette_Third.indd 37 10/7/20 1:39 PM

2DEVELOPMENT
PUSH AND PULL
For On the Rocks, cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd made sure to
understand Sofia Coppola’s vision—then embraced questions
BY PHILIPPE LE SOURD
• ON THE ROCKS WRITER-

DIRECTOR SOFIA COPPOLA
AND DP PHILIPPE LE
SOURD DISCUSS A
SEQUENCE
COURTESY OF APPLE TV+ / A24
FALL 2020 / COMPLETE GUIDE TO MAKING MOVIES MOVIEMAKER.COM
137_On the Rocks - Philippe Le Sourd_DONE.indd 38 9/30/20 7:47 AM

T
L
HE FIRST THING SOFIA COPPOLA sometimes technical and sometimes cre- her father. This was the first time she
told me about On the Rocks, the ative. In pre-production, a director and her had filmed a feature in the city, and she
story of the relationship between a team collaborate on these questions and wanted to film in Soho, the West Village,
father and daughter played by Bill Murray see where they lead us. I’m always most and Tribeca—all locations that felt per-
and Rashida Jones, is that she wanted interested when none of us yet know the sonal to her. How could we shoot New
an elegant aesthetic. She was looking for answers. York in a fresh way? And be elegant?
something very natural, and she really I started with a mood A big part of On The
Elegant
believed in her story. board, knowing our ques- Rocks happens at night.
Elegant doesn’t mean fancy and ornate, tions and answers would Should we use film, or
doesn’t mean
as some people believe—it means beauti- expand as we worked: digital? Lights in urban
fully simple. during location scouts, cities have changed a lot.
fancy or ornate
Sofia Coppola truly understands the and when we saw the Today, streets use LED
characters she writes, and she’s very logi- actors in costume for the lights and cities are much
— it means
cal in her approach to directing. But there first time, for example. brighter than they used
are always challenges in a screenplay, and She usually likes to see to be. I tried different
beautifully
you rapidly start encountering questions, the actors speak their dia- digital cameras like the
logue on set, then starts Sony Venice, but Sofia
simple.”
blocking, and we explore and I preferred the look
the shot list together. of film. So that raised an-
Actors like Bill Murray other question: Would we
also bring a lot of ideas to need to push or pull?
a scene. Sofia likes to be Pushing film (rolling
close to a character’s feel- it faster than the speed
ings, and not to disturb actors with overly listed on the box), will underexpose
technical camera movements. it. Pulling it (rolling it slower) will
One of our biggest questions was how to overexpose it. After five or six light tests
shoot in New York City. A lot of scenes in I concluded that I was going to pull the
the film are linked to Sofia’s memories of film at night. There was something very
New York, specifically ones she shared with soft, and beautiful, and pulling the film
• ON THE ROCKS MARKS BILL MURRAY’S THIRD

COLLABORATION WITH SOFIA COPPOLA AFTER LOST
IN TRANSLATION AND A VERY MURRAY CHRISTMAS

2
DEVELOPMENT
PHILIPPE LE SOURD SHOOTS A SCENE

FROM ON THE ROCKS ON 35MM
helped us find shades of gray and black in likes to try something new in her stories. we had a real collaboration. We wanted
the streets. Doing tests also allowed me to For example, The Beguiled was her first to feel the speed and the energy of going
establish a general look with my colorist, time really exploring suspense and fear. On through the city, so we decided to use a
Damien Van der Cruyssen. We both real- the Rocks would be her first car chase. biscuit rig. Unlike a process trailer, a bis-
ized that scanning the film at 4K gave us I did lots of research on past car chases, cuit rig allows you to really feel the car’s
the freedom to give the look we wanted to and even did a small edit matching cars acceleration. It’s an energy you cannot
the final film. from other films, which became like a really create otherwise.
One of the biggest challenges was a car moving storyboard. Her brother, Roman New York is a very complex city
chase throughout the city. Sofia always Coppola, had also done some research, and to shoot in. Some ideas fell through
because we didn’t have enough time. We
changed some locations due to weather.
And the city is also really strict about
where you can shoot and when. For
the car chase, we only had one day of
shooting and were only allowed to use a
couple of blocks in New York.
But I was also very interested in
capturing the city, without interrupting
it. In New York, the cars don’t stop when
people cross stress. When you look at
films from the French New Wave, such
as Cleo from 5 to 7 or Elevator to the
Gallows, they feel unique to their time in
the way they capture the atmosphere of
the city and its pedestrians. We wanted
to keep our crew small enough so that

we could capture a sense of life in the
city. MM
ON THE ROCKS IS A STORY OF A DAUGHTER (RASHIDA JONES) AND

HER FATHER (BILL MURRAY) On the Rocks is available to stream on
Apple TV+ on October 16.

Pierce Law Group. . . who the
independents have depended on since 1996.
Production Counsel, Film Finance,
Private Placement Offerings &
Intellectual Property Matters.
Contact: David Albert Pierce, Esq.
(310) 274-9191
PIERCE LAW GROUP, LLP
9100 Wilshire Boulevard
Suite 225, East Tower
Beverly Hills, California 90212
www.piercelawgroupllp.com
(888) 875-0756

2 DEVELOPMENT
CHARM,
LIE, BEG
To make Shithouse, writer-director-star
Cooper Raiff turned a tweet into a Jay Duplass
mentorship and lied like crazy while shooting
around his college campus with no money.
BY COOPER RAIFF
S
HITHOUSE IS A NANO- movie for spring break?” Madeline responded, Pre-production for Madeline & Cooper
BUDGET feature based on “Buzz off man.” Will responded, “Yeah I don’t only lasted one day. We got a camera and
my college experience and want to do that.” Then I offered them a sweet boom mic in the morning, then we walked
my relationship with this $150 and they were both like, “Curses! Foiled around campus and figured out where the
great person I love named again!” two characters were going to talk to each
Madeline. It’s about a other. We rehearsed while we did this.
homesick college fresh- Madeline and I weren’t SAG, so we didn’t
man who goes to a party and ends up have anything to worry about there. And
spending the night with his sophomore we filmed everything on campus, and
RA who’s had a shitty day and wants planned to tell security guards we were
someone to hang out with. Shithouse making a student film, so we weren’t
started as Madeline & Cooper, a 50-min- worried about permits or anything like
ute crappily-made-in-earnest movie. The that. But I learned a lot of very basic,
movies are about the same thing, but the very important things. Here are the
one that came first, Madeline & Cooper, seven lessons I took away from my expe-
was made by three people total. rience making Madeline & Cooper:
Madeline Hill, Will Youmans (an-
1. Make sure it’s going to be quiet
PHOTOS COURTESY OF IFC FILMS
other great person I love), and I made DYLAN GELULA AND COOPER RAIFF
when and where you’re filming.
Madeline & Cooper a couple years ago,
I wrote Madeline & Cooper in a week because
when we were at Occidental College. It was
it was just a matter of me translating all the
2. Make sure people aren’t going to be an-
the end of February, and we didn’t have noyed that you’re filming when and where
iPhone notes I had jotted down during my first
any spring break plans in place because we you’re filming.
years at college into screenwriting software.
weren’t seniors or fun planners. So I texted
them, “Hey, what if we snag a camera and
Madeline & Cooper ended up having seven very 3. Don’t forget about light. The only light
noticeable dead pixels, but it meant a lot to me. we had was from our phones, so we had to
a boom mic from school and make a little
137_Shithouse_DONE.indd 42 9/30/20 8:26 AM

If you make
something that
means a lot to
you, you’re unlike
SHITHOUSE DP
so many people
RACHEL KLEIN WITH
CAMERAS. making things. ”
RAIFF.
get very creative. But being creative is

fun! And it’s okay if there’s a scene or
two where you can’t see a character’s to make a movie. Madeline and
face. Right? I were trading off operating the
boom mic during scenes we were
4. Check the fucking weather. acting in at four in the morning,
while Will was trying his very best
5. Try your best to film scenes not to fall asleep, so as not to drop
in order. the expensive camera we didn’t
own. Despite its obvious flaws
6. Cut scenes, not takes. Unless it’s though, it meant a ton to me. So I
going to hurt a teammate’s feelings, cut got up the courage to tweet a link
scenes if you think you’re going to be low on it’s good enough to keep people watching. to Jay Duplass and was like, “Bet you won’t
time. Trying to fit every scene in by doing It sucks, but it’s true: If you make some- click on this link then email me.” No lie, Jay
less takes will lead to a sucky movie. Get thing that means a lot to you, you’re unlike emailed me twelve hours later telling me he
every scene right. Even if it means you don’t so many people making things. Most won the bet. Over the course of the next year,
have time for another scene down the road. people making things are like “What will he helped me turn Madeline & Cooper into
PHOTOS COURTESY OF IFC FILMS
Ask yourself if you can cut scenes, and you’ll be good?” People then watch those things Shithouse.
most likely realize you can. and say “yes” or “no.” What a weird world. Jay mentor-produced Shithouse, but it was
Make something that means something by no means a Duplass Brothers Production.
7. If your main reason for making some- to you. People will watch and it will mean It was an “oh my god what the fuck are we
thing is “because it’ll be good,” you should something to them. doing” production. It was the hardest thing
not make it. You’re focused on the wrong I’ll ever do and the least amount of sleep I’ll
thing. Make something that means the The finished Madeline & Cooper indeed ever get. The MVP of Shithouse was also the
world to you. From there you will make sure looked and sounded like a movie made in a MVP of Madeline & Cooper: Will Youmans.
week by three people who didn’t know how

DEVELOPMENT
Will and I
realized we were
basically going to
have to become the
most manipulative
people in the
world.”
college campus for one day would’ve been a

fourth of our entire movie budget.
After shitting our pants (not really), Will
and I realized we were basically going to
have to become the most manipulative
people in the world. And that’s what we did.
I’m not proud of all the lies we told, but we
didn’t see another way. Our movie became “a
student short with no money and four crew
members.” We charmed and lied and begged
and charmed and
lied and begged. And,
again, we learned
quite a lot. Here are
nine lessons Will and
I took away from our
Shithouse pre-produc-
tion experience:
TAI NICOLE WEINMAN SCRIPT SUPERVISING IN A SHOWER 1. Save every

DYLAN GELULA, WHO PLAYS MAGGIE single phone num-
ber you ever call as
a contact.
When I told Will that Jay Duplass wanted two weeks of shoot-
to help me turn Madeline & Cooper into ing on a campus,
2. Don’t fall in
love with loca-
Shithouse, Will was like, “Oh no.” He knew I but I realized no
tions before you’ve
was going to ask him to help. And he knew school was going
secured them or
he was going to say yes, because he secretly to allow us to film
made the decision
loves drama. while students
to go ahead and
And, yes, there was drama. The main were on campus.
steal them.
source of drama was the fact that we had The day after my realization, Will and I asked
to rush pre-production because I realized our college for permission to film our movie
way too late in the game that we were going on campus right before the start of school.
3. Get auto included when you first get
production insurance.
to have to film two weeks before the end of They actually said yes. But then they told
summer. Either that, or we were going to us how expensive it would be, and we truly
have to film the movie next summer. The thought they were kidding. Without disclos-
4. Be super nice to your SAG rep so they
feel guilty not answering your calls.
movie is about college and we had at least ing all the details, I’ll just say filming on our

5. Get insurance for something the
second you know you’re going use it,
because it can take a long-ass time.
6. Have location contract templates

ready to go.
7. Food. Food. Food. If you’re like me

and Will, you’ll keep pushing food off.
“Oh relax! Food is food! We’ll figure it
out.” Idiots. You will not believe how
much food costs and you will not
believe how big of a role food plays in
group morale. OLIVIA WELCH (L), COOPER RAIFF AND AMY LANDECKER SMILING AFTER A LONG SHITHOUSE DAY.
8. Meet with every single person

who is going to work on your movie. You 9. Don’t rush pre-production. more than that. It’s the time where
need to have a relationship with each you’re looking out for yourself and for
person so that when you’re all exhausted I won’t mince words, making a movie your teammates. You’re making sure
and pissed and need to do one more scene that means a lot to you for very little everybody is going to be fed and rested
even though it’s already been 12 hours and money sucks so hard. But! It won’t suck and taken care of so you can all work
you can’t afford to pay overtime, you can as much if you don’t rush pre-production. together to make a movie that means a
look at each one of them and say what you Give yourself time. More important, lot to every person on set. MM
need for the movie to be the best it can know what pre-production is. I didn’t
be. They might not give a shit and leave know what it was. I thought it was just Shithouse opens on demand on October 16,
anyway, but they’ll respect you and trust the block of time where you put things from IFC Films.
you as a leader come tomorrow. in place for production. But it’s much
• LOGAN MILLER (L)

AND COOPER RAIFF IN
SHITHOUSE .
45

2
DEVELOPMENT
________ IS DEAD. CINEMA IS ALIVE.

didn’t see it coming and we still don’t. because I believed that cinema might help
Kirsten Johnson made Dick Johnson This is what death does to us, too. It sneaks me bend time, laugh at pain, and keep my
Is Dead to imagine the unimaginable up on us. Fill in this blank with the name of a father alive forever.
person you love beyond words (it could even Where did I ever come up with such an
be yourself) : ________ is dead. idea? How did we manage to make this
BY KIRSTEN JOHNSON
The brain refuses. It is so painful you don’t movie? “Development” is a word we use
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BARBARA NITKE, COURTESY OF NETFLIX

even want to complete the sentence, let alone to describe part of the movie-making pro-
I
actually imagine a future when that sentence cess. Ostensibly, it’s the beginning of the
RREVERENCE. PLEASURE. Transgres- will be true. process. But to get back to Peru, and the
sion. Heartbreak. Betrayal. Laughs. What This pandemic has transformed the world people who think about time in a way that
more do you want from a movie? into a place where we can suddenly imagine puts the future behind us and the past in
To not see any of it coming. that any person is vulnerable to the possibil- front of us, I will tell you that I believe cin-
The Quechua tradition in Peru is ity of untimely death. Including ourselves. ema is a time machine. By cinema, I mean
credited with this metaphor for time: The Can cinema help us? I have long believed the act of watching movies, imagining
past is in front of us, because it has already that it can and it does. But this moment tests movies and making movies. I believe that
happened. The future is behind us, because my faith anew. when an audience watches a movie they
we can’t see it coming. Dick Johnson is my dad. Out of my ab- are collaborating in the making of that
The global pandemic we are now living solute refusal to accept the possibility of his movie, even after everyone who filmed it
with exemplifies this metaphor in spades. death, long before this pandemic came along, and everyone on the screen is long dead.
The future snuck up on us from behind. We I made a film called Dick Johnson is Dead A movie allows its audience to travel back
137_Dick Johnson is Dead_DONE.indd 46 9/30/20 8:00 AM

in time and an audience allows a movie the most hard-won, lifelong trust can be lost For years, I have collected images into
to travel forward in time. And the more I forever in an instant. Trust is magical, pre- notebooks. There is no organizational
search to understand where my ideas come cious, fragile. Trust is key. order to them—they are simply ongoing
from, the more I find myself traveling both I knew I had to embrace the fact that accumulations of images which make me
forward and backwards in time and wishing if I wanted to make something deeply feel things. They are paper versions of the
I had the capacity to understand quantum experimental and unpredictable—in its form, ways I encounter the unexpected when I
physics. content and effect, I shouldn’t expect—nor am filming. The notebooks have plastic
So there’s the “what”— the ideas of a film could I rely on—the commercial marketplace sleeves so I can pull the images in and
and where they come from—and there’s the aspects of the documentary ecosystem to out and move them around. Working on
“how.” They are inextricably entangled. help me initially, or maybe even ever. the application, I went to the notebooks.
Back in 2016, I was traveling to film The ever-necessary process of writing I composed the application in the form
festivals with a movie of a visual hand-written
that had taken me many letter, using the images
years to make. Made of to generate and flesh
footage I had shot as out ideas. The images
a cinematographer for opened worlds that my
many different directors, words could not. Since
Cameraperson explores the application wasn’t
how filming challenges for public consumption,
me as a person. The I allowed myself to use
experience of making the images that I hadn’t cre-
film and showing it to ated myself—I included
audiences was catalytic. images of Buster Keaton,
While I had no idea what a write-up from a festival
I wanted to make next, I catalogue about Melba
only knew how I hoped to Williams’ film about her
make it. father, an old postcard
Here’s what I won- DICK JOHNSON AND HIS DAUGHTER KIRSTEN JOHNSON, DIRECTOR OF DICK JOHNSON of an ice floe, and a
dered: Could we invent a IS DEAD . polaroid of my father
way to make a movie that sleeping with a magazine
would ask everyone who draped over his face.
was a part of it to grapple
with their own relationship to death, and as Cinema might help Now, when I look back, I
can see that my brain was developing the
a consequence it would offer back to them
their own love of cinema as a form of solace me bend time, laugh idea of Dick Johnson is Dead before I was
consciously aware of it. The ideas were
and respect?
(I can only shake my head now to think at pain, and keep my sneaking up on me from behind.
After writing that application, I had a
that this impulse somehow led me to make
a film in which I cinematically “kill” my father alive forever.” dream. I saw a man I didn’t recognize in
an open casket. He sat up and said “My
father over and over. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.) name is Dick Johnson and I’m not dead
Making Cameraperson liberated me in yet!” It was such a vivid wake-up call. My
so many ways. The extraordinary collabora- brain was telling me that my dad was
tions with everyone on that film made me grant applications is a long game of confront- running out of time. That dream gave me
believe that if I gathered trusted collabora- ing the profound question, “Does the world a cinematic idea of what to do about it.
tors close again, we could put a process want or need this thing I hope to make?” To Could I stage my father’s funeral in the
into motion that would help us imagine have stamina for it, I must think of writing presence of his friends, in the church he
and make a new film. I felt freed from the an application as an opportunity to under- had attended for 50 years, while he was
impulse to pretend to know anything. When stand more about what I am trying to do, still alive?
we were cutting Cameraperson, its editor, whether I get the grant or not. I went to Marilyn Ness and Katy Chevi-
Nels Bangerter, would say, “We have to Since its inception, the Art of Nonfiction gny at Big Mouth Productions, with whom
build it so the audience can learn how to program at Sundance had intrigued me I’ve collaborated many times, including
watch the movie from watching it.” because of its support of formal innovation on Cameraperson. As well as both being
Making movies is all about building. The in documentary filmmaking. So in 2016, just immensely talented directors, they are
question is how do you build trust? As a when I was thinking about the how of what deeply experienced producers. Marilyn
cinematographer, you learn that sometimes I wanted to make next without knowing the compliments my abstract tendencies with
trust takes years to build and sometimes what, they offered me the chance to present her proactive and far-ranging intelligence
it’s miraculously instantaneous. The other an application unrestricted in form. I jumped about how to make meaning through
thing camerawork teaches you is that even at it. reliance on incremental strategies. Katy

2 DEVELOPMENT
• HAPPILY, DICK JOHNSON IS

NOT ACTUALLY DEAD.
knows from years of producing that she absurdist taboo words like, “I want to make our blindspots, is a form of testing what’s
wants to lead teams and projects that treat a film with my dad using stuntpeople. I want worth making. This “development process”
all collaborators with respect, and she knows to ‘kill’ him over and over until the day he is actually about the deep relationships we
I trust her to fight for these values—and I really dies, for real.” cultivate over time with people who love
believe her when she tells me about the con- I watched my friends eyes widen and and make cinema. I was taking my time to
straints a project is facing. I knew they would heard them try to hold back incredulous imagine the film with trusted friends and
laugh with me and understand the colleagues, contemplating the how
depth of my anticipatory grief. of the process, still totally unsure
I talked to Judy Karp, the incisive of whether it would be possible to
soundperson I’ve shot with for years, fund, because who would take the
as well as fellow and beloved camera- leap with me on this except trusted
people Nadia Hallgren, John Foster, friends?
and Andre Lambertson. I went to Then, for the first time in my
Nels Bangerter and simply the thrill 30-year career in documentary, I got
of hearing him laugh made me want a cold call from someone wondering
to get back in the edit room with him what I wanted to make next as a di-
immediately, even though we didn’t rector. It was Priya Swaminathan, at
have any footage yet. We grappled that time with Annapurna Pictures. PHOTOGRAPHY BY BARBARA NITKE, COURTESY OF NETFLIX
with the ways documentary and We didn’t know each other, but she
fiction might confront each other in had seen Cameraperson. When I
our effort to play with and face the DICK JOHNSON, STILL GOING STRONG. told her I was interested in working
unexpectedness of death. with stuntpeople and my dad as a
With the core production team way to explore the unexpected edge
forming, we started to conceive a way in laughter. I heard many of them ask “Why?” between the imagined and the real—the
which editing and sound design would hap- with concern in their voice. I couldn’t answer absurdist cliff between life and death—in a
pen much earlier than usual in the process, that question yet, but in my heart I knew it Jackass funny kind of way, she laughed out
and just as the images had given me ideas was connected to how desperately, urgently I loud and said, “Did you know I worked on
while writing my grant application, the edit didn’t want my dad to die. Jackass?!”
and sound design taught us what to film These conversations about our projects, I was so excited by how I had personally
next. I discussed it all with many people, this “call and response” with our collabora- hit it off with Priya, that I imagined for a
floating the trial balloons of saying out loud tors—who should be people who challenge moment I should fly right out to L.A. and

pitch her Dick Johnson is Dead on my own. producer whom Big Mouth Productions would be the first time I didn’t have to
But years of “being crew” and seeing many had successfully worked with before to search for money while making a film,
directing and producing styles in action produce the fictional scenes in Johanna but in exchange I knew I would have
has taught me to value humility, to trust Hamilton’s 1971), we budgeted how much to give some things up. The clock was
the people who know different things than money would be required to film my fa- ticking. My father’s time on the planet
you do about the filmmaking process, and ther’s funeral in advance of his death. was running out. So despite these com-
to always remember how much you need As we started to imagine the physical promises, I decided to entrust the film
your team. Especially at the moments when and economic logistics, I had to return to to the Netflix team.
something thrilling is happening, and you the emotional experiment. What would it I spoke about trust earlier, but
suddenly experience the euphoria of think- take to gain the trust of the Seventh Day this time, when the stakes were my
ing you’ve made the big time.
I learn over and over again that
I can’t know how to move into new
filmmaking territory alone. Bring
your trusted allies with you—that’s
where it’s at. They will have your back
protect you from yourself and from
others, seeing opportunities you can’t
see for yourself. Katy and Marilyn’s My brain
acuity as producers meant they could
see that a meeting with Priya meant was telling me
we had leverage to ask for pitch
meetings with other companies. That that my dad was
led us to meetings with independent
financiers, sales agents, and stream- running out
ing services, where we attempted to
convince them that our iterative proof time.”
cess would help find a path to making
this improbable film.
In all of those meetings, I talked
to everyone about our relationship
to death and denial. I wanted the
conversations to matter to them and
me whether we ended up working to-
gether or not. I asked everyone we met WE KNOW THIS LOOKS BAD, BUT WE PROMISE: DICK JOHNSON IS NOT DEAD.
with if they had ever thought about
what form of death frightened them
most, or if they had a way they wished to Adventist church in Seattle, the church my father’s own life, the leap of faith for
die. We all laughed a lot and everyone said father had attended all of his life? Could I all of us felt immense. To my marvel,
they couldn’t quite imagine what the film really invite all of our friends and family and with the insightful guidance of
would look like, and nearly all said they to my father’s “funeral”? While my father Kate Townsend and Jason Spingarn-
couldn’t take the risk on funding it without was game, what about my only sibling, my Koff, Netflix has honored all of my
seeing it first. brother Kirk? Suddenly, the word that had choices as director and daughter. Dick
For the first time in my career, this en- so preoccupied my thinking in making Johnson is Dead now exists and will
couraged me. It was great news that none Cameraperson returned: “permission.” be released to meet an audience that
of these experienced people, who financed What makes permission and access pos- understands more about grief and loss
scores of films, could quite envision the sible? Trust. Risk. now than any of us did when we were
film, but that they had all laughed and That is what people I trusted and making it.
responded with deep emotion to the respected did with me every step along this As we all keep facing the uncertain-
pitch. Priya brought her colleague, the “development” phase—they took risks with ty of the future in front of us, let’s keep
legendary Chelsea Barnard, into the mix, me. How moved and surprised I was when reminding ourselves that the past is in
saying they would be willing to back us in Lisa Nishimura saw our funeral footage front of us too. And those we trust and
shooting a pivotal scene which we could and said yes! She and Netflix were willing risk and fight and dream with are the
then use as a proof of concept in order and excited to take the risk with us of not ones with whom we build. MM
to open up funding for the film. Then, knowing what the film would be. I was
together with Marilyn, Katy, and Maureen then faced with a dilemma. Was I willing Dick Johnson is Dead is now streaming
Ryan (a truly innovative and ingenious to take the risk? If I took Netflix’s offer, it on Netflix.

DEVELOPMENT
2
MAKE A
BATTLE PLAN • TOM HANKS LOOKS OUT
AT THE “VIRTUAL WORLD”
SURROUNDING HIS SHIP
IN GREYHOUND .
okay: that and the opportunity to work with

For the Tom Hanks World War II epic Greyhound, director Aaron Schneider Tom Hanks on his passion project.
used planning and technology to merge the practical world and an Greyhound came into my life in late
imagined one. 2016 after a three-hour sit-down with Tom.
Seated amongst a half-dozen miniseries
Emmys he and his partner Gary Goetzman
BY AARON SCHNEIDER had won, we chatted about filmmaking and
what inspired us about our favorite films. I
lobbied him for stories about the directors
and cinematographers he’d worked with,
D
many of whom were my heroes coming up
EVELOPMENT AND PRE- Greyhound had all of the typical prep as a cinematographer. As we talked, Tom
PRODUCTION: that period on a challenges and seemed to invent a few of did amazing impersonations of the direc-
project when the sky’s the limit. its own. For starters, the story takes place tors he’s worked with. His Penny Marshall
As a kid, I loved a good creative entirely at sea, and of course, the WWII is spot on and full of affection. Eastwood?
project. Mine always seemed to ships that still exist are too old to sail (I Well, you can imagine. But I’m not sure
revolve around my favorite TV shows and looked into it). Our seafaring flick would Zemeckis would want to hear his, and I
movies; I built Star Trek phasers in my base- have to be shot on dry land, which put definitely don’t want to hear mine.
ment workshop, a Ghostbusters Terror Dog even more pressure on the level of photore- Eventually, the conversation turned to
from plasticine, and I can remember teaming alism in our visual effects. Digital water is Greyhound, and his excitement became
up with my next door neighbor to dig a second only to digital humans in its level of infectious. You might think Tom Hanks
Hogan’s Heroes tunnel under my backyard. difficulty, and water has its own paradox. has done it all, and you’d be almost right,
We started out strong, but when our parents The closer you get to realism, the harder but we all harbor cinematic dreams not yet
shut us down for dubious engineering, it realism is to achieve. realized. Greyhound was his baby, and I
took us twice as long to fill the hole back We also had a relatively modest VFX bud- knew exactly how that felt.
in than it did to dig it. In the parlance of get and 35 days to shoot an action-filled war The excitement of birthing something
PHOTO CREDIT: APPLE TV+
Greyhound, we had no battle plan. And if drama, so where to begin? I started by re- personal was a big part of how my directing
moviemaking has taught me anything over minding myself daily that I was there to tell career began. After building a successful
the years since digging myself into that hole, a great story. A big part of prep is keeping career as a DP, I adapted and shot the Wil-
it’s this: Creative and design battles are won your passions stoked, and after all, the story liam Faulkner short story, “Two Soldiers,”
or lost in the planning stages. is the reason I took the gig, right? Well, in hopes of steering my cinematography
137_Greyhound - Aaron Schneider_DONE.indd 50 9/30/20 8:05 AM

career toward writing and directing. I had script can place every player on the field or football movie teaches us, you can’t shoot
no idea where the effort would take me, and every ship on the ocean. Now imagine that the “production world” before fully real-
I threw my entire life savings into it. Before our 90-minute football movie takes place izing the “virtual world.”
it was over, my bank balance had dropped on a single football field and that every To bring that virtual world to life, we
to post-collegiate levels, but in the end, I got quarter will involve virtual players running turned to the C.S. Forrester novel upon
to take my mom to the Oscars and share virtual plays. So what do the director and which the film is based. Forrester had done
my win for Best Live Action Short with her. actor need to do to render a performance his homework—his naval dialogue wasn’t
(The rest of my family had to slum it up in at the center of a “virtual” narrative? just window dressing. By extracting the
the nosebleeds). On Day One, Tom was going to be star- extra information detailed in the novel, we
But before any poten- were able to plot each
tial reward, there is only tactical event onto naval
the unknown, the dream maps and bring them to
and the excitement of life using “pre-vis” – the
creating something computer-aided design
personal. Having felt stage that assists film-
all those things mak- makers in pre-visualizing
ing “Two Soldiers,” I ideas for lighting, cam-
recognized them in Tom, era, and shot design.
and I wanted to help him To maximize our
succeed. pre-vis budget, we
My first efforts were assembled our own
in helping prepare the in-house team freelance
screenplay that Tom had computer-artists working
so carefully crafted. As a in Autodesk’s Maya, the
director I once shot for industry standard ap-
used to say, “You can’t • THE “PRODUCTION WORLD” OF THE GREYHOUND SET, plication for animation
LED BY DIRECTOR AARON SCHNEIDER (C).
thread a script through a and CG effects. The naval
projector.” For every idea maps corresponding
on the page, a direc- to each sequence were
tor needs a solid visual loaded into Maya and
approach for expressing it. The human
drama in Greyhound lived in-between and
“Creative and design used as templates for creating bird’s-eye
animations of the battles. By animating
underneath the words. The naval jargon
was there to lend a heightened veracity, so
battles are won or them at true nautical speeds and accurate
distances, we could ensure that our chore-
it was Tom’s performance and inner-life as
Commander Ernest Krause that would con-
lost in the in the ography adhered to real-world physics. The
overhead animations would become the
nect the audience to the film emotionally.
Emotion comes from empathy, and empathy
planning stages.” visuals I needed to bring the virtual world
into the production world for everyone to
comes from understanding, so I felt it was see. Huddling up around my iPad, Tom and
crucial that the audience understood every others would be able to understand the
tactical dilemma Krause was facing—or events taking place around them. All Tom
nothing Tom was capable of expressing would need now were some LED mark-
would resonate. No less critical would be ing out a portal window, asking me where ers for key positions and timing. With his
helping Tom to build a performance from his receivers were and where to throw mind’s eye and imagination full, he could
virtual battles. the ball. Not only did I need answers for now concentrate on building a fully nu-
As a thought experiment, imagine him—I also needed an effective means of anced performance.
you’re a director tasked with shooting communicating them. Working in parallel, my cinematographer
an actor playing a quarterback in a film I started by breaking down sequences Shelly Johnson and I built a visual grammar
wherein the field, the stadium and every into shots that belonged to one of two that could serve as a shorthand between us
other player will be created as visual effects distinct categories; the “production world” on set. Our goal was to thrust the audience
in post. How do you go about shooting the and the “virtual world.” The “production into the story and keep the camera mobile
quarterback’s coverage without first un- world” would be shot on stage over 35 days enough to follow Krause into every corner
derstanding the offensive play? The script and would consist of Krause engaging with of the ship. A large-format camera allowed
might describe the snap, the long throw his crew and his reactions to the events for the use of longer focal lengths so that we
to the receiver and his dive into the end surrounding his ship. The “virtual world” wouldn’t need extra-wide focal lengths to
zone—Tom’s screenplay described these would consist of the world surrounding the get wide shots of our cramped pilot house.
types of key story points vividly—but no ship, to be created later in post. But as our Longer focal lengths also reduce distortion

2 DEVELOPMENT
and create more intimate and flattering ing hunt. Before a simple sneeze could photos of the Kidd. Using photogrammetry
close-ups. We chose a hand-held approach create a moment of dramatic tension software, an array of photos can be virtually
to add energy and create a feeling of sponta- during the U-boat chase, the audience had realigned to their original capture point in
neity and urgency. to understand there was a rhythm to the 3D space, then used to re-generate a model
The structure of the screenplay was crew’s communications. Audiences had of what was photographed. The computer
designed to drop the audience into an unfa- to be acquainted with the tempo of the processing took nearly a month.
miliar world and engage them in the process music before I could yank the needle off I next went searching for a way to recreate
of learning how things worked on a naval de- the record for effect. realistic ocean conditions. There are a lot of
stroyer. But to pull this off, we had to ensure Our earliest and key production deci- digital ways to recreate ocean for movies but
that the answers they’d be looking for were sion was to base Greyhound’s fictional none could accommodate the real-time sim-
baked into the film. We first had to become destroyer on the USS Kidd, a museum ulations we needed for our pre-vis. A bit of
experts ourselves, and given the rich history ship moored in Baton Rouge that has been internet sleuthing finally led me to an Nvidia
of Tom and producer Gary Goetzman’s WWII lovingly restored to its original WWII game-engine plugin called Waveworks that
productions at Playtone, there was no way I configuration. By matching our set to the generates an accurate ocean surface, and can
was going to fumble the ball when it came USS Kidd, the museum ship’s decks and float ships in real-time based on real-world
to historical accuracy. The pressure was on, weaponry could stand in for everything physics and wind parameters. By incorporat-
ing Waveworks and sailing a camera-ship
alongside the model of the Kidd, I could
recreate my own digital sea-going film crew.
The random and opposing motion of the
digital ships relative to each other grounded
the shot in photorealism. Suddenly the digi-
tal environment came alive with the chaos
and energy of ship-to-ship photography.
With help from two talented coders who
ported the game-engine plugin into Maya for
us, Waveworks became the foundation of our
pre- and post-vis workflow. Working inside
our digital recreation of the North Atlantic
was a lot of fun, and a big help in com-
municating what I was trying to achieve to
VFX Supervisor Nathan McGuiness. It also
gave our VFX house, DNEG, something to
emulate and build upon. Best of all, we got
to see our prep-work pay off as DNEG’s final
shots dovetailed into the film. Having been
conceived from information in our bird’s-eye
SCH animations, they all fell into place organi-
SCHNEIER USED INTENSIVE RESEARCH AND PRE-VISUALIZATION TO HELP HANKS IMAGINE
WHAT HIS CHARACTER IS SEEING IN GREYHOUND . cally. The production world and the virtual
world married up seamlessly.
Greyhound prep was complicated, multi-
and I spent hours on the internet learning that was too cost-prohibitive or difficult to layered and a lot of fun. It gave us the feeling
and researching. I created a photo website build. The challenge would be to combine from the start that we were ready to embrace
on zenfolio.com as an organizational tool to the stage work, the museum ship and the the unknowns of production—but that’s an-
categorize wiki information, YouTube videos visual effects elements all into one unified other story, for another issue of MovieMaker.
and thousands of historical photos that I whole. Digital camerawork and animation So for all the aspiring or student filmmakers
could share with my department heads as can quickly betray photorealism when it’s who might be reading this, I encourage you
they came aboard. We all had to become too polished. So how could we ensure our to embrace the planning stages. Don’t just
storytelling teachers for the audience. VFX would speak the same messy, analog visualize the story you’re telling. Spend some
For me, teaching meant structuring language we had in mind for our stage brain power on visualizing the challenges
sequences that illustrated how equipment photography? you’ll face and get creative finding solutions.
and procedures played their part. A blip As a self-taught pre-vis artist, I had a But whatever you do, don’t pick up that
PHOTOCREDIT: APPLE TV+
on a radar screen followed by a cut to the few ideas, but I needed a digital model shovel until you have a battle plan. Trust me.
radar dish that spotted it would define of the ship to do some experimentation. It’ll keep you from digging yourself into a
their relationship and functionality. Ditto Second unit director Steve Quale and I hole you can’t get out of. MM
for the sonar console and the pings that took a weekend trip to Baton Rouge, where
would provide a metronome for the open- we spent two days capturing over 10,000 Greyhound is now streaming on Apple TV+.

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PHOTOCREDIT: APPLE TV+

3 PRODUCTION
AARON MOORHEAD
(L) DOUBLES AS THE
CINEMATOGRAPHER
FOR ALL OF THE DUO’S
PROJECTS
BY JUSTIN BENSON,
AARON MOORHEAD AND DAVID LAWSON
AS TOLD TO CALEB HAMMOND
A
ture in 12 days, eh, I don’t know. But, once you board for everybody. We probably end up being
ARON MOORHEAD: We did an episode
enter 20-days plus, you’ve got to start treating it a lot closer than most crews—it ends up being
of Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone,
as if it’s your nine-to-five, and you’ve got to take kind of family. So for us, respect is the number
and something that we actually
care of yourself. one thing and making sure that everybody, all
are instigating after Synchronic is
the way down to the PA who’s cleaning up trash
called an elements meeting. It’s like JUSTIN BENSON: Except that it’s your 5 a.m. to
at the end of the day, or the security guard
a focused version of the production meeting, 2 a.m.
who’s watching it overnight, feels respected and
where it’s the AD and the producer, and we
DAVID LAWSON: One thing that we’ve always in- knows that you care about them as a human.
identify choke points. What’s going to be that
That’s our number one goal always.
stupid thing that slows you down,
because you didn’t talk about it enough? • JAMIE DORNAN (L) AND ANTHONY MACKIE MOORHEAD: We’ve never had a
And you just go through that with every ARE EMTS IN SYNCHRONIC
situation where a lot of the heads
department, and you just say, OK, who’s
of department don’t basically live
bringing this to set? Who’s bringing
together during the film. And that’s
that? Who’s cleaning it up? That kind
not a necessity. If we’re working in a
of thing. Because you realize that at a
foreign place, we’re not going to say,
certain point, when things are moving
hey, sorry, we all have to camp out
really fast, and you didn’t talk about
together. On all four of our films, at
it, departments sometimes forget to
least the three of us, and then often
talk to each other. And then suddenly,
about three more heads of depart-
somebody says, I thought the other per-

ment, have all been in the same
son was doing it. On our Twilight Zone
building at the very least, and spent
episode, the meeting really saved us.
a lot of time together. I would never
I’m sure everybody says this, but
make somebody do that. But I can’t
taking care of yourself is so important. That stituted is a no-yelling policy on set. The three
tell you how useful it is, in ways that are hard
goes for all three of us. Just even getting the of us feel like that’s a top-down kind of method-
to quantify, both on a team building/family
right amount of sleep is one of the most weirdly ology. I’ve AD’d some of our projects. We’ve also
building level, and also on just a logistical,
important things, especially if you have a longer brought on ADs for some of our bigger ones,
“Hey, we need to work this out, meet me in
schedule. If you’re shooting your first indie fea- and that’s a big thing for us: respect across the
137_INTRO Production_DONE.indd 54 9/30/20 8:33 AM

6 LIGHTING COMPANIES
YOU SHOULD KNOW
MOORHEAD: Having come BriteShot

from relatively blue-collar briteshot.com
production backgrounds This company, which specializes
has definitely helped our in LED lighting solutions and
has rental offices in Atlanta,
general interactions on
Los Angeles, New York City and
set.
Toronto, aims to stake out a new
BENSON: If you didn’t come niche with air filtration systems,
from the bottom like we UV-C lights and enclosures for
did, I could see how you keeping your team in zones.
might walk onto a set and
go to video village and look Draco Broadcast
over and there’s a PA stand- dracobroadcast.com
ing there on their walkie: Draco is known for affordability
“What’s that person doing?” and a can-do attitude to lighting
everything from studios to Zoom
Well, that person got here
calls—an especially important
before the sun was up, and
part of the business, these days.
they’ll be here until five
hours after you, cleaning
up gum.
Cream Source
creamsource.com
MOORHEAD: And they’re Founded in 2004, when it built a
going to continue doing large-scale LED installation for
that so they can barely pay George Miller’s Happy Feet, this
their rent. growing company has expanded
to seven high-end LED products.
LAWSON: So there’s one
the living room or the lobby, or wherever time I’ve seen Justin and Aaron disagree on Hive Lighting
you are in five minutes.” something over the course of four movies. It hivelighting.com
was about a location on Spring. Based in downtown Los Angeles,
LAWSON: On Synchronic, the three of us Hive emphasizes efficiency and
lived in a shotgun house, which means I BENSON: I thought you were going to bring up sustainability. With a line of
had to go through Justin’s bedroom to go to the flat-earth thing. [Laughs.] insect-themed lights, like the
the bathroom. Aaron had to go completely Bee 50-C and brand-new Super
LAWSON: We were disagreeing on two different
outside to go to the bathroom. Our AD, Hornet 575-C that promises
locations for the scene. And we’re like, okay,
our editor, and our camera operator were 30,000 lumens in the palm of
timeout, let’s put a pin in it. Let’s walk around.
at the attached shotgun. So your hand.
And then we continue to
literally, we were in a six-unit
compound. THE DEVIL’S walk around this Italian
town, and as soon as we
LiteGear
litegear.com
BENSON: Something I just
realized from this conversa-
ADVOCATE IS IN turned a corner and saw this
one location, literally both of
Productions love keeping
LiteGear’s LiteMats around
tion that we’ve never quite ex-
pressed: There is something
THE ROOM ALL them simultaneously were
like, “That’s it.” Even when
because of their affordability and
extreme versatility. Any indie
about all of us coming from
doing a lot of do-it-yourself
THE TIME.” the two of them disagree,
they still agree eventually,
production could benefit from at
least a couple.
films, oftentimes together... on what is the actual correct
while we’re all also simultane- answer. Luminys
ously working on sets where luminyscorp.com

BENSON: There are a lot of discussions that
we’re oftentimes the lowest person on Flip over to pages 63-64 to see
happen in pre-production, not even necessarily
the totem pole. So when you have that, how the company’s SoftSun lights
disagreements. We’ll just say, “Devil’s advocate.
and you get to make your own movies helped simulate the appearance
What about this? What about that?”
where you’re higher up on the call sheet, of a wash of daylight in the new
you respect everyone so much more. You James Bond film No Time to Die.
MOORHEAD: The devil’s advocate is in the room —MM.
understand that every single person on set
all the time. MM
has an insanely hard job.
137_INTRO Production_DONE.indd 55 9/30/20 8:34 AM

• DIRECTOR CLEA DUVALL
WITH MACKENZIE DAVIS
AND KRISTEN STEWART
ON THE SET OF HAPPIEST
SEASON .
M WAK E
E
N KES
MIS TA on dir ector Cle
a DuVall s ays she u
sed
B
t
Y
o f ocus too
CLE
A
muc
D
h on the ki
UVA
LL
nd of dir ec t or she di
dn’t wan t to be
s t Se as
Happie
137_Happiest Season_Second.indd 56 9/30/20 8:39 AM

3
PRODUCT ION
A
S AN ACTOR, I’ve had a wide range of good
and bad experiences with directors. The good
experiences were what kept me in an industry
that is not always kind, and reaffirmed my life
choices. The bad experiences sometimes felt
like they reinforced the parts of myself I hoped no one
else could see. I know, I know: very dramatic. But remem-
ber, I’m an actor.
When I directed my first film, The Intervention, I
brought some tools with me, but also a lot of baggage. I
was so afraid of becoming the kind of director I disliked
that I spent a lot of my time trying to achieve negative
goals—I don’t want to be too controlling, I don’t want the
actors to feel like they don’t have a voice, etc. Spending all
your time making sure you’re not being something doesn’t
allow much space to be what you are.
PHOTOS BY
LACEY TERRELL /
TRISTAR PICTURES
137_Happiest Season_DONE.indd 57 10/29/20 5:37 PM

3
P R O D UCT IO N
Actors are smart, and they think

about their characters in a way
Prepping my new film Happiest Sea-
son, I didn’t want to focus on the nega-
no one else does.”
tive. It was my first studio movie, and I
was telling a personal story that meant
a great deal to me. The stakes were high
and there were so many actual goals to
focus on that I didn’t have time for the
negative.
The cast was huge and full of busy
actors who were working on other
projects before, during and after our
movie. This meant we never had a table
read, and the first time we were hearing
the scenes out loud was during rehearsal, The creative scouts gave me a deeper
right before we shot. Not ideal, but it was understanding of not only the spaces
worth it to have the incredible cast I still and the scenes, but of each character
can’t believe we were lucky enough to get. and the role they played within them.
Our schedule was ambitious. Every day With such a big cast, it’s easy to let
seemed nearly impossible, and I knew we actors or moments fall through the
didn’t have time for luxurious on-set re- cracks, but the preparation we did
hearsals. In order to maximize our time on created an overall vision that I hadn’t
the day and not completely lose my mind, experienced on my first film.
I started building creative scouts into my Every day of the shoot, John and I
prep schedule. would arrive over an hour early to walk
The creative scouts consisted of myself through the day’s work and refresh DUVALL AND DAN LEVY .
and my DP (the extremely talented and ourselves on everything we discussed
delightful John Gulesarian) going to the in prep. Then when the actors arrived,
locations and walking through the scenes. we would first read the scene. Just read
This was an opportunity for us to be in it. No acting, no blocking, just getting felt the most organic to them. The majority
the spaces without anyone watching or the words out of their mouths for the first of the time, the actors and I would be in
waiting, and we would revise our shot list time in front of other people. And I would sync as it related to the blocking and tone
based on what we learned. NEVER, no matter what, give them ANY of a scene, but if we disagreed, we would
On my first film, I was resistant to direction on the readthrough of the scene. talk through the scene to figure out what
do even loose blocking without actors, I always feel vulnerable the first time I’m was bumping and make adjustments ac-
because I didn’t want them to feel micro- reading lines out loud in front of people, cordingly.
managed. But when you have long scenes and I think every actor should be given the Once filming began, I would let the
with over a dozen actors all crossing in opportunity to do that without feedback. actors take one or two takes before giving
and out, you need a game plan, or it’s Next, we would put the scene on its feet. them any direction. Actors are smart, and
chaos. Once the camera is rolling, you can I would talk the actors through the general they think about their characters in a way
send the actors off to the races, but you blocking, then once they ran the scene to- no one else does, so if you give them direc-
have to give them a starting line. gether, we would fine-tune based on what tion too early, you’re robbing yourself of

were not meeting. Sometimes it made
it better, sometimes it didn’t. That’s a
tough battle that no director has ever
helped me win.
The experience of making Happiest
Season was incredibly healing. There
were so many mistakes I made on my
first film that I didn’t let myself off the
hook for. It’s not that I didn’t make mis-
takes on Happiest Season. I did. But they
were new ones. Having the opportunity
to stop focusing on the kind of director I
didn’t want to be gave me space to be the
director I am. I was able to take owner-
ship without feeling like a dictator, and
create a process that allows myself, the
cast and the crew to feel safe enough to
do their best work. I look forward to my
to be. Most of the time, the actor was doing next film, when I can correct my most
a great job, but had set a goal for them- recent mistakes and make a whole slew
selves only they knew they weren’t achiev- of new ones. MM
ing (something I do as an actor ALL THE
TIME). If that was the case, I would try to The Happiest Season is scheduled to
reassure them and remind them that no be released on November 25 by Sony
one else had the expectation they felt they Pictures.
something you may not be able to get back.

If the actor/actors were not getting
the tone of the scene or missing beats, in
between takes we would talk through the
moments that weren’t landing and I’d find
a way to communicate what was needed,
whether it be a new attitude, starting the
scene at a different emotional place, finding
where to take a beat, or speeding up. Usu-
ally after a take or two they would find it,
and we’d move on. MACKENZIE DAVIS AND KRISTEN STEWART SHARE A HAPPY MOMENT.
Sometimes an actor struggled because
they couldn’t get to the place they wanted

3 PRODUCTION
No Time to Die cinematographer

Linus Sandgren helped director Cary
Joji Fukunaga build a romantic,
PHOTO BY NICOLA DOVE / MGM / UNITED ARTISTS;

emotional ride
BY LINUS SANDGREN
137_No Time to Die - Linus Sandgren_DONE.indd 60 9/30/20 8:45 AM

E
ARLY ON, DIRECTOR We synchronized a lot on that
CARY JOJI FUKUNAGA very first call regarding how we
and I talked over Skype looked at the heart of Bond. As
about his idea for this new writing was happening, we started
Bond movie and how it pre-production, and there was a
could honor the soul of the Bond lot of focus on finding locations,
franchise and who James Bond is. with a group of 10 including pro-
Cary talked about how he loved duction designer Mark Tildesley,
the romantic action movies that my gaffer, David Sinfield, and Cary.
the Bond franchise stands for—this I’ve done big films before—The
whole history of rich, romantic and Nutcracker and the Four Realms
fantastic action films. So we talked was a big-budget film shot in
about how to achieve that feeling, Pinewood Studios. But No Time to
shooting on film on large formats Die was going to be shooting in six
like 65mm to give the audience countries all over the world, with
everything they could possibly obviously many more cameras, and
imagine. I was happy that he was many more sets. So I realized early
into the charming action and that on that I needed to find a work-
he wanted to also get humor in flow where we could streamline
there, and he wanted real drama. He the chain of information regard-
wanted people to cry and laugh and ing visuals. My gaffer and I did a
have a great ride. lot of testing in pre-production to
PHOTO BY NICOLA DOVE / MGM / UNITED ARTISTS;
PRODUCTION DESIGNER MARK TILDESLEY AND HIS TEAM REPRODUCED SANTIAGO

DE CUBA ON THE BACKLOT AT PINEWOOD STUDIOS IN LONDON
RIGHT: PHOTO BY JACK MEALING

3
PRODUCTION
CLOCKWISE FROM
determine color palettes that we could ap- different locations and presented them to TOP:
ply in various locations. We programmed Cary, who provided thoughts or his own in- CARY JOJI
our light tables with color presets for spiration that I could work off—Cary, Mark FUKUNAGA, LÉA
LED lights and made detailed notes for a Tildesley and I would have that spitballing SEYDOUX AND LINUS
SANDGREN
methodology in every type of location and time for all the scenes in the film. This is a
time of day. There was a good shorthand normal procedure, but we did that with a KEY GRIP DAVID
between us, and also the second unit, lot of different countries and scenes that we APPLEBY AND LINUS
to have a lot of those decisions already had to also go scout. We shot in Jamaica, SANDGREN SET UP
decided in pre-production. Italy, England, Scotland, Norway, and the AN IMAX CAMERA IN
MATERA, ITALY
There was just so much more logistical Faroe Islands—so there was quite a bit more
work that we had to do to run this big ship, than normal to discuss. We always looked DANIEL CRAIG IS
but it was intimate and small in a way, in for how to move from this scene to the next BACK FOR A LAST
that the core—the producers, the decision and still stay in the same world. SPIN AS BOND
makers, real decision makers—were in the No Time to Die has quite an emotion-
same room as the director. Even though driven storyline. There are moments that
this was a big production, we could almost are not only funny or action-driven but
make it like you actually emo-
would an indepen- tional. Cary loves
dent film. old-school gadgets
Cary wanted and things that sequence in a lab that initially had yellow
it to feel like we make you laugh, and white tubes. On the day of shoot-
TOP RIGHT: PHOTO BY JACK MEALING; LEFT AND BOTTOM RIGHT:

were moving a lot and there are a lot ing, Cary wondered what color options
between different of characters that we had, and if we could play around and
locations, so one are full of wit. He look at green tubes. Every single lamp
PHOTOS BY NICOLA DOVE / MGM / UNITED ARTISTS
scene shouldn’t spent a lot of time was connected with a lighting desk, so
look like the next, making characters we had full control, and it was quick to
and it should feel that you’d like to change it on that day.
like we were mov- hang out with, Cary thinks big. On a set, he would use
ing through a rich whether they are an entire stage. He wouldn’t be happy
world. If it’s cold, we wanted to enhance good or evil. He has a lot of love for these if it was cut in half. On the largest stage
that to make it look really snowy, cold, and characters. in Pinewood Studios, we built this huge
icy. Then we could move over to Matera, underground concrete-looking bunker filled
Italy, and we’d make that city feel really hot. Stay Flexible with water in the middle, with doors that
We always tried to find a specific mood for Thanks to the formula for the light that open to the sky in the ceiling of the studio.
each location. With that in mind, I started we created, the programmed LEDs could Even though it was already around 250 feet
to do lots of mood boards on how I saw the be changed at the last minute. There is a long, Cary asked: “Why don’t we make it

We always tried to
find a specific mood
for each location.”
even longer?” So we hung a blue screen to

allow a set extension in VFX. We wanted
TOP RIGHT: PHOTO BY JACK MEALING; LEFT AND BOTTOM RIGHT:
the location to be moody and somewhat

futuristic, so working with Mark Tildesley
and the art director, we ended up having
PHOTOS BY NICOLA DOVE / MGM / UNITED ARTISTS
around 30 custom-made light sticks that

came out of the water. Some extras working
in two feet of water would move these sticks
around. That was the only light source
in that entire environment—it was very
simple. But then we had four 100,000W
SoftSuns, in addition to the daylight coming
in from the top, as the roof doors opened
and light washed down. This was how the
contrast in our lighting looked from scene
to scene sometimes—and in this instance
in the same scene. We went from very little

3
PRODUCTION
lighting to suddenly a lot of light. Often the

sun on these sets would be represented by
these 100K or 200K light sources.
Even on big productions where you have
resources, it’s still important to think in a
simple way. It may not be obvious at first, but
you can solve things in simple ways. I appreci-
ate when things are not overdone and the
lighting is simple. If I don’t need more than
one light source, I don’t use more than one
light source.
Camera Movement
We used free dollies and cranes mostly.
Cary and I both love dollies. When Bond was
moving with confidence, we moved with dol-
lies. When Bond was in handheld combat ac- Instead of also finding a house, we built decision, since we ended up shooting
tions, we were handheld. We also used hand- the house in London and shipped it up to about eight weeks, all nights and very
held for emotional scenes where he was a Norway and put it on the ice. Because we complicated stunts, in this environment.
little bit unstable emotionally. Handheld also needed to do things to this house, and it We shot it all in IMAX, with cable cams
helps the audience feel the physical struggle had to look a certain way inside in order and stunts, and we designed the light-
for Bond, who is older but still strong. to work, it just had to be built. ing so we could shoot longer takes in 360
We were also scouting and considering degrees.
Just Build It shooting in Santiago de Cuba, but the de-
At one point, we were scouting in Norway cision was made to actually build Santiago Different Strokes
for a frozen house on ice, and we ended up de Cuba in London on the outdoor backlot I never want to work against the direc-
finding a beautiful location that Cary loved. of Pinewood. This turned out to be a good tor. Even if he wants something that I did
NEAR RIGHT: PHOTO BY JACK MEALING; PHOTOS BY NICOLA DOVE / MGM / UNITED ARTISTS;
not initially think of, I explore that idea,
because I always want to push my own
limits. I try to adapt my way of thinking
onto the director’s thoughts. You want to
be on the same page and make the same
movie—that’s the key. I find so much joy
in finding different types of directors with
different work methods. When I’m work-
ing with David O. Russell, he appreciates
the camera to always be able to move
anywhere at any given moment. As you’re
rolling, he wants the camera to be able
to move over there or other there. That
flexibility is a challenge to figure out and
may not be my initial ideal situation, but
in letting him do that, he makes the film
the way he wants it: spontaneous with
new dialogue coming up suddenly. So I
need to give him that flexibility. Of course

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: I could object and say, “I
NO TIME TO DIE GOES HANDHELD TO EMPHASIZE don’t think that’s the best
PHYSICAL STRUGGLE way to do this, I think
you should think about it
LINUS SANDGREN CHECKS THE SHOT
this way.” I’m not afraid of
JEFFREY WRIGHT RETURNS AS FELIX LEITER speaking up if I feel like
something should be dif-
LINUS SANDGREN ON A DOLLY IN NORWAY ferent, but I’m very happy
to explore other ways with
RAMI MALEK AS THE VILLAIN SAFIN
directors. Someone like
Gus Van Sant is very much
NEAR RIGHT: PHOTO BY JACK MEALING; PHOTOS BY NICOLA DOVE / MGM / UNITED ARTISTS;
into letting things happen

and photographing it
almost like a documentary
in the moment.
Between La La Land and First Man, key that you collaborate in a way where
Damien Chazelle was almost a completely you have mutual respect for each depart-
different director in regards to what he ment, and that early on you establish the
wanted. He wanted a curious self-aware answer to the questions: “What is the film
camera in La La Land—one that was play- we are making?” If everyone is on the
ful, almost like its own character. In First same page to make that film, the collabo-
Man, he wanted it to feel like a documen- ration will be fruitful. But you need to be
tary. So it was both a completely different sensitive early on and ready to compro-
approach and also different method in mise. I’ve been lucky. Be a good collabora-
how we approached it and shot the project. tor and listen to each other. MM
Cary is also that way. He changes a little
like Damien for the project. He approaches
the script and the story independently No Time to Die is scheduled to open in
from what story he’s telling. theaters on April 2, 2021, from United
Usually I get intrigued by differences. It’s Artists.
137_No Time to Die - Linus Sandgren_DONE.indd 65 10/7/20 1:43 PM

3 PRODUCTIO N
The
Trial of
Right
Now
Aaron Sorkin had one rule for The Trial of the Chicago 7, about the
1968 riots and court case that followed: It had to feel modern
BY CALEB HAMMOND
137_Trial of Chicago 7 - Aaron Sorkin_DONE.indd 66 9/30/20 8:50 AM

O
N A SATURDAY MORNING
in 2006, Aaron Sorkin met with Steven
Spielberg and said he’d be delighted to
write a script about the Chicago riots
of 1968. On the drive home, though, he
realized there was a problem: He didn’t know anything
about them. So he called his dad.
“What happened in Chicago in 1968?” he remembers
asking. “What was this conspiracy trial that followed? I
didn’t know any of it.”
But he’s always willing to learn. The Trial of the Chi-
cago 7 marks his return to courtroom drama, the genre
that sparked his film career. He was an actor first, then
a playwright, whose A Few Good Men became a hit film
in 1992 and established Sorkin’s gift for writing dialogue
tailor-made for movie stars to deliver: In The Trial of the
Chicago 7, Sacha Baron Cohen gets to deliver the film’s
equivalent of Jack Nicholson’s unforgettable,
“You can’t handle the truth.”
But The Trial of the Chicago 7 is also
a test for Sorkin. Though he cre-
ated the Emmy magnet The West
Wing, and his screenplays in-
clude The American President,
Moneyball, and The Social
Network, which won him
his 2011 Oscar, the new
film is only his second as
a director.
PHOTOS BY
NIKO TAVERNISE

3
PRODUCTION
Suddenly Relevant
Sorkin turned in his first draft of the
Chicago 7 script the day before the 2007
WGA strike, beginning a long process of
the “can getting kicked down the road,”
Sorkin explains. Spielberg eventually tran-
sitioned from director to producer, and
both Paul Greengrass and Ben Stiller were
attached to direct at different times.
Then two things happened.
“The president of the United States
was getting nostalgic at his rallies about
the good old days, when you used to beat
the crap out of protesters and you’d carry
them out on a stretcher. So it felt like this
story was suddenly relevant,” Sorkin tells
MovieMaker. “And I had directed my first
movie, Molly’s Game, which Steven was
sufficiently pleased with, that he thought
and Abbie,” Sorkin says. “Suddenly the film clash with law enforcement? And the third
I should direct Chicago 7.”
was organized into three pieces. I was go- story was the personal story, the friction
The film argues that federal prosecutors
ing to tell three stories at once, which was between Abbie and Tom, these two guys
opportunistically grouped together several
the courtroom drama, the evolution of the who are on the same side, but can’t stand
left-wing activists who were not, in fact,
riot—how did what was supposed to be a each other, and by the end come to respect
closely aligned, in order to demonize them
peaceful protest turned into such a violent each other.”
LOOK THROUGH THE LENS. LOOK THROUGH THE VIEWFINDER.

DO YOU LIKE WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING AT? BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE
MOVIE IS GOING TO LOOK LIKE.” —Aaron Sorkin
and blame them for violence that was

actually the fault of the police. One was
Tom Hayden, who Sorkin was able to meet
before he died in 2016.
Eddie Redmayne plays Hayden, leader
of the Students for a Democratic Society,
better known as SDS. His co-defendants
included fellow SDS leader Rennie Davis
(Alex Sharp); Abbie Hoffman (Cohen) and
Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong) of The Youth
International Party, aka the “Yippies”;
and David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch),
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NIKO TAVERNISE / NETFLIX
a middle-aged, radical pacifist. Black

Panther chairman Bobby Seale (Yahya
Abdul-Mateen II) clearly doesn’t belong;
prosecutors just hope he will scare white
jurors.
“Spending time with Hayden is what led
me into the personal story between Tom

didn’t have to coax a performance out of
THE “YIPPIES” ARRIVE them. Everybody can have their own way
FOR THEIR DAY IN COURT of getting there.”
SORKIN DIRECTS ACTORS He describes some of their stylistic
IN CHICAGO’S GRANT PARK differences: “Jeremy Strong is an im-
mersive actor. If he’s playing a scene
JEREMY STRONG where there’s a knife sticking out of his
AS JERRY RUBIN
chest, he wants someone to jam a knife
in his chest. Until the moment I called
action, Sacha would have his earbuds
in, listening to Abbie Hoffman speeches,
because he always wanted to stay with
the dialect. He wanted to stay in that
zone.” Frank Langella plays Judge Julius
The Trial of the Chicago 7 opens with an look good and us look bad. But more im- Hoffman, an occasionally menacing
energetic montage which introduces the portantly, he is concerned about the First presence who alternates between senility
Hoffman/Hayden divide up top, showcasing Amendment implications. In other words, and thinly veiled disdain for the defense.
the different factions of the anti-war left. he doesn’t think these men are guilty.” “Frank Langella is a sweet, affable guy
The montage ends with the usually unflap- who tells wonderful stories. But he told
pable Walter Cronkite’s proclamation: “A Formula One me that he didn’t want to socialize with
Democratic Convention is about to begin in How did Sorkin manage such a large en- the rest of the cast. He wasn’t going to be
a police state. There just doesn’t seem to be semble cast? He didn’t see it as a problem. hanging out at craft service with them,
any other way to say it.” “I felt like I was thrown the keys to a and that when the cast was called to
Jumping ahead five months past the Formula One race car every morning, and the set for those courtroom scenes, he
convention (“Obviously we’re going to go if I just didn’t put the car in the wall, these wasn’t going to go in with them. He was
back there and see what happens,” Sorkin guys were going to win the race. What I going to go in the back door, because
explains), the audience is thrust behind en- mean by that is, I just needed to make sure he wanted these guys to only see him in
emy lines into the offices of newly installed that everybody was in the same movie. court at that bench. So people have their
Attorney General John Newton Mitchell. And that seemed to happen pretty easily. own styles, but they all ended up in the
Through a well-timed presidential portrait … These are phenomenal actors, you really same movie.”
swap, we learn: Johnson out; Nixon in. The
scene sets up the entire trial.
“It had everything to do with decapitat-
HOW
I
ing the left, the anti-war movement, and take a lot of showers. I’m not a germaphobe,
Black leaders. To the Nixon administration, but if I start writing, and it’s not going well, I’m
guys like Abbie, Jerry, Dellinger, Rennie,
Hayden, Bobby Seale, were very dangerous AARON not getting anywhere, I take a shower, I change
my clothes. I feel refreshed and it’s like starting over
guys,” Sorkin says.
The scene also introduces Joseph Gor-
SORKIN again. I do that all day long. I have a shower at my
COMBATS
office at Warner Bros. Obviously I have a shower here
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NIKO TAVERNISE / NETFLIX
don-Levitt as Richard Schultz, a young hot- at home. I do that, I drive around in my car, listen-
WRITER’S
shot prosecutor who is ambivalent about ing to music—usually the music I listened to when I
the government’s us vs. them approach. was in high school. I’ll tell you that my taste in music
“Schultz says in that scene, ‘I represent
the people without passion or prejudice.’ BLOCK stopped maturing the moment I graduated from high
school. And I try to start arguments with myself, to
His job is to win, and he understands that, see if I can get a scene going.
but he knows that they’re making a PR
mistake on this that is going to make them

was always my intention that the movie not
be about 1968, that it be about today. And
all of our department heads, from Shane
Valentino, our production designer, to Susan
Lyall, our costume designer, to Phedon—ev-
• SORKIN ON THE
SET OF THE TRIAL erybody, I made it clear: ‘Don’t lean into ’60s
OF THE CHICAGO 7 iconography. Don’t lean into the peace sign,
the tie dye and the psychedelic aesthetic.’”
Sorkin asked his composer, Daniel Pember-
ton, who also scored Molly’s Game, to “stay
Cohen was attached to the project and this, I tend to lean on the DP probably away from the ’60s protests songbook.”
the longest. Sorkin relays that while at more than your average director. I’m so Sorkin explains: “People are coming into
Cambridge, Cohen wrote extensively on weak when it comes to the visual elements this movie, just kind of assuming that they’re
“the intersection of Jews and African- of filmmaking.” One of his takeaways from going to hear ‘Fortunate Son’ and ‘Sympathy
Americans in the civil rights movement in directing Chicago 7 was this: for the Devil’ and that kind of thing.”
the ’60s.” His research continued during “Look through the lens. Look through He does concede that “Fortunate Son” is a
shooting.
“At night I’d get an email from
him at the hotel with just a piece of
IT WAS ALWAYS MY INTENTION THAT
a speech of Abbie’s, saying, ‘Oh, this THE MOVIE NOT BE ABOUT 1968, THAT IT BE
is so good. Can we use it somehow?’ ABOUT TODAY.” —Aaron Sorkin
And I’d have to say to him, ‘It is
really good, but it has nothing to do
with the scene,’” Sorkin says.
While in production, Sorkin only made the viewfinder. Do you like what you’re
dialogue changes for rhythmic purposes. looking at? Because that’s what the movie
“Even before I started directing, there is going to look like.”
was a certain amount of directing that I Another takeaway: Shoot lots of light
was already doing when I was writing the through smoke.
script and a certain amount of editing that “I don’t even want to say that I stole it
I was already doing when I was writing from Steven, which of course I did, because
the script, particularly now when I’m I don’t do it nearly as well as Steven, but I
directing. By the time we get there, we’re first started learning about light through
not talking about the words anymore. Un- smoke with E.T., and then in every one of
less it’s something like I need an actor to Steven’s movies after that, and got to use it
get from this mark to this mark, and the for the first time here. Now every movie I
line of dialogue isn’t long enough for him write is going to have light coming through
to do that—so I’ll add six more words.” smoke in every scene. It’s the only thing I
On a phone call from quarantine in his know how to do as a director.”
native Greece, Chicago 7 cinematographer Joking aside, Sorkin did have one
Phedon Papamichael confirms Sorkin’s mandate that he applied across all depart-
steadfast commitment to the rhythms of ments: The film needed a modern feel. “It
his dialogue: “To him, it’s all about the
spoken word, and he really doesn’t get
involved in designing shots or coverage, as
long as the person who speaks his line is
on camera. To the extreme that sometimes
he’s sitting in front of the monitor, and he
has his eyes closed. He just really focuses
on the rhythm of the language and the
rhythm of the writing.”
Papamichael says Sorkin even once told
him, “I know nothing about what you do.”
Sorkin adds that “with Molly’s Game • DEFENSE ATTORNEY WILLIAM KUNSTLER (MARK
RYLANCE) GIVES BOBBY SEALE (MATEEN II)
UNSOLICITED LEGAL ADVICE

Vietnam soundtrack staple for a reason. “It
works every time: chopper with the helicop-
ter blades, and then…” He playfully mouths
the iconic opening guitar riff from the
Creedence Clearwater Revival classic.
to try to pretend that news footage... was
original footage. So we desaturated it into
black and white, and we got some wide
shots. But mostly what I wanted were very
tight shots: just a shot of a face right before
PRODUCTION
3
a nightstick crashed into it, blood, a tear- ation—just submerge them in the crowd
gas canister hitting the ground—that kind and tell them they’re making a docu-
‘We See the Shark of thing mixed in with a few wide shots. mentary about what’s happening: ‘You’re
Exactly When We Should’ Because of all the smoke from the tear gas out in the field. You’re part of an actual
The courtroom where much of this drama we were able to make it look like there’s a news team.’ And, of course, we only have
takes place was built inside a school in Pat- lot more people than there are.” 150 extras, 200 at most, and there were
erson, New Jersey, but the riot scenes were Some of that archival film footage is 10,000 people in the park in 1968, but it
shot on location in Chicago’s Grant Park. actually Haskell Wexler’s footage from the helps, sticking them in the crowd, and
“The big reason why the movie had a hard 1969 drama Medium Cool, which was shot not getting too many cinematic wide ob-
time getting made was those riots,” Sorkin in the summer of 1968 in Chicago and jective shots, but really creating a feel for
says. “They were budget busters.” combined dramatized scenes with footage what it felt to be in that park that day.”
But he and Phedon found a unique solu- of real events. Sorkin says he was so pleased with
tion. “Because we were shooting it in Grant Papamichael and his team captured their the result that he would take the same
Park where the riots actually happened, we own documentary-like footage: “I would approach again, even if money weren’t
could find news footage that fit perfectly send my two camera operators handheld, an issue. He feels strongly that creative
with what we were doing. We weren’t going into our crowd of extras in our re-cre- constraints help creativity. “When you’re
doing a play, a movie, writing a song,
something in the creative process has
to happen out of necessity, usually for
budgetary reasons, and you come up
with something that turns out to be
what you would have done if you had an
unlimited budget. Obviously, the classic
example is Steven again, with the shark
not ever working in Jaws, so they had to
shoot around the shark, and we see the
shark exactly when we should, at the
end of the second act.”
Sorkin cites another example.
“On The West Wing, every once in a
while, someone would come into my
office, tell me how much over budget we
were for the season, and say, ‘Can the
next script be a bottle show?’—mean-
ing no new sets, no locations, no guest
cast, no extras. I think a lot of people
would feel handcuffed by that. I feel
great when that happens, because now
I’ve started. I know that the whole thing
has to take place on our set, which is
the White House, there are no extras. It
can be night or weekends. It’s going to
be like a play; it’s going to be enclosed.
And those usually turned out to be our
best episodes.” MM
• AARON SORKIN
SHARES A MOMENT
The Trial of the Chicago 7 is available to
WITH THE PROSECUTION
stream on Netflix on October 16.

3 PRODUCTION
SHOOTING ON
PANDEMIC TIME
The assistant director of the pandemic
film Don’t Fear breaks down how indie
moviemaking has changed—in some
ways for the better.
BY JON C. SCHEIDE
M
Y ENTIRE CAREER IN production operations. Independent moviemakers have money you can outsource. Without, you take
has revolved around one factor: time. always worked with fewer resources, shorter on all those details.”
What’s our call time? What time schedules, and generally less of everything. If you’re working with SAG-AFTRA per-
is sunset? How long is this lighting setup? The old ways are over. Screamers and yell- formers you’re going to have to abide by SAG-
What time will the cast be done with hair ers and 18-hour days are no more. A COVID- AFTRA protocols, period. And you should
and make-up? Do we have enough time to 19-compliant set will be slower than sets used abide by them anyway, because no one wants
get this before lunch? to be. But it’s cheaper to follow the rules than to make people sick. Even the lowest-budget
Everyone who’s ever been on a film set to need to shut down your film because you productions should require COVID-19 testing,
dreads not finishing a scene, complicated didn’t take the rules seriously. personal protection equipment, and limited
company moves, or losing the light. Whether The tools that will help us include technol- time on set.
you’re working on a micro-budget indie or ogy, changing our schedules—and not suc- And this is where time begins to slow
the latest teen-driven tentpole, once you’re in cumbing to fear. down.
production, time is money. And from what The key concept is breaking your set—
I’ve experienced filming during the CO- Don’t Fear your whole production—into zones, with the
VID-19 pandemic, work slows down and time Director, producer and writer Deon Taylor most protected zone being the shooting set,
speeds up. called me in May to propose making a film where the actors are unmasked. This zone
And we should slow down: Film sets are that revolved around a pandemic. I had been has to be clean, and the people working in
exactly the types of environments where a an assistant director on two of his films, Traf- this zone—the camera operator, boom per-
virus can thrive. Shooting movies involves fik and Meet The Blacks. But for the new film, son, assistant director, and anyone else—have
lots of close contact—in normal times, people Don’t Fear, he wanted to get back to his indie to be tested frequently, at least three times
are often within six feet of each other for 15 roots and go with a small crew, in one loca- weekly. Everyone must wear personal protec-
minutes or more. tion, to prove it could be done. tive equipment. Of course you need to pay
The question is, does the current situation I worked with Roxanne Avent, Taylor’s close attention to all local laws and regula-
shut out indies? The studios and networks producing partner, and Heather Kritzer, the tions, which may limit the number of people
have plenty of money to cover the added unit production manager, to design a set you can have in one place.
expenses related to new health and safety of protocols that would provide safety and You’re going to have to make some conces-
measures, but their productions shoot longer, support for the cast and crew, as well as pass sions to safety, including not having the entire
which means their exposure to COVID-19 is local, state and union requirements. Kritzer crew present for rehearsals. “As far as shooting
PHOTOS BY OMAR JOSEPH
greater. No one wants their show or film to says that setting up a film under the rapidly goes, it does slow you down considerably.
become a superspreader. evolving COVID guidelines was “like learning One department at a time on set as much as
But I think indies may actually have an a whole new set of steps to get to the steps possible. Lighting crew, grip crew, and props,
advantage in terms of making great movies, that you know.” and set decorators all have to have their turn.
safely. We can pivot while the studios are “We built a cohesive plan that rivals what It was definitely a learning curve,” says Don’t
trying to turn their aircraft carrier sized the studios are doing,” she explains. “With Fear cinematographer Chris Duskin.
137_COVID shooting Tips - Jon Scheide_First_Changes_CH_Edit.indd 58 9/30/20 8:55 AM

“French hours,” is quite production-friendly. and thriving.”
Shooting a continuous day means working The reality of the continuous day is that
ten hours from call to camera wrap, period. the director will lose about an hour per day
There’s no going over, and no companywide of shooting time, even given the savings of
break for lunch. The set keeps going. The not breaking the whole company. And they
lunch window is scheduled from five to six- will also save time with technology.
and-a-half hours after call, and somewhere If we’re only allowed 10 hours, let’s make
in that time, everyone finds half an hour to them all count.
eat. Actors, hair and makeup can eat during
a lighting setup or changeover. Grips and Commitment to Safety
• DP CHRIS DUSKIN STANDS electrics can break when a scene is being In addition to testing, daily temperature
IN FOR A SHOT WHILE DEON shot. I can hear the naysayers wonder- checks, and wearing PPE, we need clean
TAYLOR TALKS WITH DON’T ing, “But what if someone misses a meal?” sets. Here’s how we maintained ours.
FEAR LEAD ANNIE ILONZEH
Sorry, we’re all adults. We were all capable First, we let the director and cast have
(L-R) DON’T FEAR of getting hired, so we should be capable of the set to themselves. Then we brought in
DIRECTOR DEON TAYLOR, DP remembering to eat. And besides, COVID-19 a camera on a wide lens, the director of
CHRIS DUSKIN, AND SCRIPT photography and the first assistant camera
SUPERVISOR DIANE to drop marks. Everyone else watched via
NEWMAN AT THE
MONITORS QTake. After a scene was marked, the art
department or lighting came in next. Then
they switched. (Of course everyone wore
masks.) When the set was ready, the cast
returned, still with masks or face shields.
Technology They rehearse on camera. Everyone else re-
Another change: Don’t Fear was mained off set, watching on QTake. When
essentially paperless. Scripts and everyone was happy, the cast removed their
cast contracts were PDSs only. PPE, and the set was closed.
Call sheets and sides were kept on Usually, on Don’t Fear, the set included
phones and tablets. We used com- just camera ops, dolly grip (if there was a
pletely online payment systems. move), boom op and the assistant direc-
That’s one thing that may tor. The focus pullers were on wireless and
change forever. Another? Virtual could be physically distant. I often carried a
meetings, virtual scouts and even virtual guidelines require us all to eat at a distance second walkie for when the director needed
table read may be here to stay. My first call from one another. It would make no sense to speak with the cast.
from Deon Taylor about Don’t Fear was over for everyone to eat at once. When we got the shot, we went to the
FaceTime as he scouted a basement location. The continuous day also allows for rest: next setup and started over.
I don’t think online production meetings are rest for the crew, and rest for the cast, which The big takeaway from this, for me, was
as effective as traditional ones, but getting runs contrary to the let’s-keep-going-until- recalibrating how much you can achieve on
20 or more people in a room is no longer an we-get-it culture of filmmaking past. Once any given shoot day. Extra prep can help,
option, at least for a while. continuous days become the norm, crews but shooting is just… slower.
Before coronavirus, QTake was an interest- will work fewer hours, actors won’t have When things go wrong, which will hap-
ing new technology. Now it’s taken a huge turn-around issues, and no one will have to pen, a film will need to address a whole new
leap forward. QTake is a video playback drive home after a 16-hour day. set of issues, starting with quarantine and
product that, when paired with the QTake These changes are part of the cultural contract tracing.
Monitor app, allows up to 16 smartphones or shift that we’re seeing across the industry. As moviemakers we’ve always had to
tablets to watch playback. That keeps people Tony Adler, a producer of Death In Texas, accept, on any given day, on any given set:
at social distance. told me: “To get the biggest bang for the This is what we’ve got. Maybe it’s someone
Using a viewfinder app like Artemis Pro, buck in the current climate, it is important else’s fault, or a piece of gear won’t work. It
meanwhile, will allow you to scout and see for all filmmakers to put the well-being doesn’t matter. Time is ticking. How do we
shots, or rehearse with the lenses you plan to of the cast and crew on the same prior- make it work? What can we shoot?
PHOTOS BY OMAR JOSEPH
use, and then share them with your team on ity plateau as the script they are trying to One of the greatest things about film-
Pinterest, Flicker, or Evernote. produce... the cast and crew should hope- making is that a tiny, disparate band of
fully band together with the producers and brothers and sisters comes together in
The Continuous Day director and their teams to achieve the best a culture of creativity, support and true
We’re moving to shorter shooting days. product for the money and the schedule that esprit de corps. More often than not, we
The “continuous day,” or what some call they can, in order to keep the industry alive succeed. On time. MM
137_COVID shooting Tips - Jon Scheide_First_Changes_CH_Edit.indd 73 9/30/20 8:56 AM

3
PRODUCTION
JUST
DANCE How Luca Marinelli and Pietro Marcello formed a
transcendent actor-director bond on Martin Eden.
F
OR SOME SCENES OF MARTIN EDEN, their Italian
adaptation of a Jack London novel about a hardworking
sailor with literary aspirations, director Pietro Marcello
sent the crew away so he could work more closely with star
Luca Marinelli. They explained that filmmaking can be like a
dance you just do, without thinking.—MM
What were the initial conversations like for this role?

LEFT: PHOTO BY FRANCESCA ERRICHIELLO; RIGHT: COURTESY OF KINO LORBER
PIETRO MARCELLO: When I started working on Martin Eden

with Maurizio Braucci, we had a script and I remember it was
M O D E R AT E D B Y S A L LY F I S C H E R around Christmas time 2017. I had thought of Luca Marinelli
T R A N S L AT E D F R O M I TA L I A N T O E N G L I S H B Y V I R G I N I A C A D E M A R T O R I from the beginning because I needed an actor who could go
through this parabola. Thanks to a friend, I managed to set up a
meeting with Luca and I was really struck by him. This was my
first experience working with an actor because until then I had
only worked on documentaries and I always worked with real
people, but never with actors. Martin Eden has been my very
first experience with actors.
137_Martin Eden - Pietro Marcello + Luca Marinelli_DONE.indd 74 9/30/20 8:59 AM

home. I think I started reading it right away and we sent everyone else away. The rest
that evening, but I wanted to read it in one of the crew would get confused, but it was
sitting. I was looking for the right moment mainly because there were times where we
to read it and while looking for this moment, needed it to be just the two of us.
Pietro kept calling me asking, “Have you
read it? Have you read it?” [Laughs.] Can you talk about the physical transfor-
mation along with all the other cues: How
How did you each work together to convey Martin Eden speaks, dresses, treats people
Martin’s transformation from working class around him.
deckhand to renowned author? MARINELLI: Let’s say that Pietro and I
MARCELLO: I wasn’t interested in telling the exchanged some ideas and we realized
story of a sailor from Auckland. What do I that it was really important from the start
know about Auckland? I grew up in Naples! for us to create our own idea. In the book,
It could have become something ridiculous it is mentioned several times that Martin
like wanting to make an American film, set Eden has this physique sturdiness at the
in America, without knowing the first thing beginning. He is a sailor that is never tired,
about America! And then also because we works all the time, wanders around, par-
do not have a seafaring culture in Italian lit- ties, gets drunk, and the next day is on a
erature, as the British and Americans do. We boat and leaves. He is young and strong.
don’t have Conrad, Stevenson or Melville. We So, the thought of creating this body, this
have Carlo Levi, Pasolini, Silone, Moravia. type of physique, came about easily. For
Even though we do have the sea, we are a two months before we started shooting, I
country that has always had problems with started specific workouts, and this is how
the sea and problems coming from the sea. the building of the body for the first part
And so, our Martin Eden was a sailor, but of the movie began. I went to Naples a
also a farmer. Then, for me Martin Eden was month-and-a-half before starting to shoot.
an archetype, just like Faust or Hamlet. We ... Getting absorbed
could have put him into Naples was
anywhere and set extremely useful.
it in any city: Paris, Then, Pietro
Marseille, London… decided to divide
anywhere! And the film into two
so, the work that parts. This first
needed to be done part was shot
to begin with was during the warmer
to understand the weather over the
character. It was to summer, while the
work on the charac- second was shot
ter, and on his ef- in autumn. This
forts. Martin Eden was fundamental
When you reached out to Luca, did you already
LEFT: PHOTO BY FRANCESCA ERRICHIELLO; RIGHT: COURTESY OF KINO LORBER
LUCA MARINELLI IN MARTIN EDEN .

is the book for for me because
have a screenplay? self-taught people, this pause allowed
MARCELLO: It was a simple script. Let’s just for those who are me to completely
say that I never asked Luca to actually “audi- self-trained. The book is more known in Eu- forget the body—not the soul—just the body
tion.” I didn’t really audition him because he rope than in the U.S., because Jack London’s and the sensations I had with the first Mar-
is already a really great actor—although his Sea Wolf is the one that is most known there, tin, permitting me to get into the next one.
screen test was not the best. I knew from the and not The Hiron Hell or Martin Eden. As Pietro used to tell me, he saw Martin as a
beginning that I would not choose him based MARINELLI: This whole movie has been a rockstar that had just landed on the ground.
on his audition. He is not an actor you really dance. And when you dance, you don’t really And so, I left the first body behind and I
need to direct too hard, by saying “go right, spend time thinking and communicating. didn’t work out anymore, didn’t do anything
go left.” What mattered the most to me was You just dance. It is a matter of body and anymore, and we started changing the
for him to understand the film, to under- soul. It sounds like something really tran- script. It looked like a different movie, but
stand Martin Eden the book. That is why I scendental, but at the end of the day, it was of course it was always the same one.
gifted him a copy of the book, which was our just like this.
very first point of contact. MARCELLO: Luca was fattened up. [Laughs.]
MARCELLO: It was a relationship between I am joking! He and I got extremely close.
LUCA MARINELLI: I remember he gave me me—behind the camera—and Luca who was We were writing the script together and re-
this huge script of about 300 pages that I the main character of the film. ... There were writing the dialogue together. Luca had his
put in the case of my moped and drove back some scenes where it was just the two of us speech coach on set, so he already had been

3 PRODUCTION
working on the Neapolitan accent. But then digital--was there a heightened pressure to MARINELLI: It was beautiful for me even
we had to make the film. And this is where it get it right in fewer takes? though I am not that much of an expert
gets interesting because to me a screenplay on the differences. The first movie I made
is an incomplete work that is finished during
MARCELLO: Let’s say that with Martin Eden I
[The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Saverio
learned a lot of things. I made mistakes as
editing. Just like Rossellini used to do, I do Costanzo] was shot on film and then after
well, obviously, but I do believe that self-
not put all my faith into a script. I firmly that I haven’t done anything else on film
criticism is fundamental to grow, improve, to
believe in improvising in films and the script because digital came along. This film has
become a better director.
would change from time to time. been, in many ways, sort of a return to my
Regarding my choice of shooting this on
When Luca had some trouble with some roots—shooting in film and acting again with
film, I have always shot on film and when I
specific words, since he was speaking in Carlo Cecchi. It has been a way to rediscover
ancient and Neapolitan language , we didn’t have the money to purchase new film, I
things with which I had started with and this
sometimes changed the script, according to would use film that had expired. I love film, I
was amazing!
what Luca and I were comfortable with. I also develop the film myself, as I am interested
in the chemical aspects of it. Film is linked to
also produced the film, so let’s say that the
another time. I am not opposed to shooting on
Tell me more about it, as an actor, what is
most difficult parts were to produce the film
digital, but I believe that there is a relation-
the difference you notice between film
as director/producer and wearing two hats,
more so than the work that Luca and I did ship between cinema and painting, and a and digital?
together. We could do 100 more films to- deeper glance into picturesque cinema. MARINELLI: First of all, the camera makes a
gether now. It has been a very, I repeat, vital I wanted to shoot the film in 35mm, but noise when you use film, which is something
experience. Also, regarding Luca’s body, we we couldn’t afford it. So, we shot it in 16mm, beautiful. The more the camera gets closer
have always pictured a bold physique, just which was way lighter. Overall, I think that to you, the more you can hear it. It kind of
like London’s character—a hard worker, with it was my experience on documentaries that feels like a creature that is approaching—it
the shoulders of a hard worker, of someone was useful in the production of this film, is really beautiful. Also, when you hear
that is used to everyday struggles. because I am used to shooting docs, I am something that is rolling you also know that
Martin Eden was shot on film and not used to glitches. it can end. You don’t know that when you
• STAR LUCA MARINELLI

(L) WORKED CLOSELY WITH
DIRECTOR PIETRO MARCELLO
IN MARTIN EDEN .
LEFT AND ABOVE RIGHT: PHOTOS BY FRANCESCA ERRICHIELLO;

RIGHT LOWER: COURTESY OF KINO LORBER

shoot on digital, and usually digital
cameras can shoot for a much longer
time. ... And then, just like Pietro says,
this does not mean that I am against
digital at all.
MARCELLO: We also have a souvenir
because the first audition—the only
audition that Luca did—we shot it on
film. It is a film that I then developed
by myself because I have this dark-
room and all the machinery. It is 30
meters of film of Luca on a balcony.
And then I also made pictures of this
with frames of it.
Did you rehearse? What did that

look like? PIETRO MARCELLO (L) TALKS LUCA MARINELLI THROUGH A SCENE.
MARINELLI: We had an agreement
from the beginning. I told Pietro that it would
have been amazing to rehearse the whole What were your favorite moments
movie first, as if it were a theater piece. Pietro soul. I do not believe in films that are built working together?
took my advice and rented a theater and we on paper. This most likely also comes from
the Italian and European tradition of doing
MARINELLI: It might seem that we always
rehearsed every scene with my character and talk about the two of us and that we made
every scene of every character of the movie. I a certain type of movie.
the film by ourselves. Truthfully, it was a
remember Pietro going from movie director to beautiful experience because it was a shared
theater director, sitting in the first rows, com- What surprised you about working together work, with everyone. I remember getting
ing on stage, going back to his seat… suddenly, and collaborating on Martin Eden? ready for the film as a great collective mo-
it had become a theatrical production of Mar- MARCELLO: First of all, I remember that ment. But there is no doubt, the wonderful
tin Eden. It was beautiful! It really helped us our first set was really extreme. With Luca things that helped me get into the film.
move through the film. Then of course, going deep in cow manure, it was a field day for There were the long walks Pietro and I took
from there to shooting the actual film was together through the arches, talking, sitting,
like entering into another world. Rehearsing eating fried pizza and just being in Naples
it before gave us the right balance of strength • LUCA MARINELLI AND JESSICA CRESSY made us fall in love with everything.
to walk into the film. IN MARTIN EDEN .
MARCELLO: First of all, Luca and I have fun.
Did either of your usual working processes We spend time together and I have to say
shift on this movie compared to previous films? it’s not even the typical director-actor rela-
tionship. We have always had fun together,
MARINELLI: The great thing about working making jokes, playing, kidding around. Even
with Pietro is the unexpected improvisa- now when we talk over the phone, we have
tion. Pietro and I would have ended up fun, just like when we were on set. Surely,
being sorry if that didn’t happen. We both even the moments when we were not on set,
LEFT AND ABOVE RIGHT: PHOTOS BY FRANCESCA ERRICHIELLO;
liked it when the unexpected happened. we would walk around Naples early in the
That particular something we needed to morning to eat or we would go to the mar-
try and fix, something we didn’t plan or ket, and we were living life in an epicurean
expect. I trusted him and we would run to- way. In making this movie and spending
wards the unexpected. This was beautiful. time together, for me what counts is having
RIGHT LOWER: COURTESY OF KINO LORBER
MARCELLO: I firmly believe that Ermanno everyone. The crew got scared and said, a human approach with the person in front
Olmi has been such a great director because “If this is how the shooting starts, we of you. I agree with something Jean Renoir
he came from the world of documentaries don’t want to imagine how it’s going to used to say about how special it is to make
as well, and he had built his foundation on end!” I can say that, from the very begin- cinema amongst friends, a movie amongst
documentaries, and he was director of pho- ning, Luca has always been my first ally. people you love. MM
tography, as well as a producer. The process For me, my hero was him, my relationship
allows one the possibility of turning a set with him was important and as long as Martin Eden opens in virtual theaters October
upside down, because I love flawed films. we were bringing this forward, the movie 16, and will be available on Kino Now and home
The important thing is that the film has would move forward. video on January 19, 2021, from Kino Lorber.

4 POST-
PRODUCTION
BY JUSTIN BENSON,
AARON MOORHEAD AND DAVID LAWSON
J
at the other half of our shotgun-
USTIN BENSON: On our first movie
house duplex. He was there
Resolution, we had this amazing
editing the whole time. Usually
production assistant named Michael
what happens is a few weeks
Felker. He was an old film school
after we wrap principal photog-
friend of Aaron’s, and he eventually
raphy, he gives us his first edit
became our closer collaborator. He constantly
of the movie. We all watch it to-
gives us notes and feedback on all of these just does some last things and smooths it out.
gether, give some feedback, and
scripts. He ended up becoming our “third edi-
tor,” which sounds a little demeaning. He’s actu-
then Aaron and I each take half of the movie, DAVID LAWSON: Felker adds a level of objectivity
arbitrarily the first or second half. We edit our that you guys don’t have because of your close-
ally more like the first editor. Basically, the way
halves, and we trade halves, and ness to the material. Where he knows all the
he works is, he comes to set
polish what the other person did. material, but he still can step back and be like,
with us and as we’re shooting,
he starts editing together the
IS IT EVEN That’s what we’ve always done. “Oh, no, no, there was a better shot or a better
And that gives us like the direc- sequence. What about this?”
first assembly cut of the movie.
He’ll oftentimes tell us on set,
A PROBLEM? tor’s first cut. And then we send
MOORHEAD: It’s one of those rare times where,
it off to friends. We get feedback.
“Hey, I really think you’re miss-
ing this two-shot right here.”
OR IS IT A And then we go back in the edit
because there’s so much preparation and so
much development, so much conversation, that
and Aaron and I start retool-
AARON MOORHEAD: We reshot STRENGTH?” ing it more. Two halves, trade
we very rarely get to experience, what people
call movie magic. We experience it when a

the halves, polish it up, show to
the whole end of The Endless performer nails a take that we absolutely love.
people, get some feedback.
because of his thoughts on how … We get that when we first start hearing our
the scene was coming together. MOORHEAD: We get Felker back in composer do work because we’re not very
And we don’t have money for at that process, so he sees what musical, and we don’t really know what he does
reshoots. I thank God we actually were still we’re doing and why. completely.
shooting so we could slide in an extra hour- When Felker surprises us: That’s movie
BENSON: He comes back and gives us feedback,
and-a-half to reshoot it. magic.
and then usually in the final edit, since he
BENSON: On Synchronic, he was with us editing knows it better than anyone else besides us, he LAWSON: I don’t feel like that trading halves
138_INTRO Post-Prodcution_DONE.indd 58 9/30/20 9:02 AM

necessarily. Sometimes they’re the
emotional part of the film.
BENSON: On our first movie Resolu-
tion, we organized a cut screening and
brought everyone over to Aaron’s house.
And we realized we were getting a cer-
tain degree of groupthink.
MOORHEAD: We have a lot of friends
who have gotten to direct major studio
movies, and they talk about the notes
process, and some of them love it, and
most hate it. But they’ve said, it actually,
weirdly comes down to the location of
your test screening, but also specifically
who your moderator is, because they’ll
ask exactly the right questions, and
they’ll understand your movie.
Really it’s about identifying the right
problem, and is it even a problem? Or
is it a strength? Because you’re telling
people, this movie isn’t done, tell us how
• AARON to fix it. Those things that stood out
MOORHEAD (L) might have been seen as flaws then, but
AND JUSTIN once you lock the picture and say, “This
BENSON ON SET
is the finished product,” people say, “Oh,
that’s a choice.” All your flaws become
choices.
LAWSON: Part of getting honest feedback
is giving honest feedback. The three of
us have given a whole bunch of notes on
a whole bunch of our friends’ films over
method should work at all. But God, does it same people. And they’re like, “I just don’t feel the years, and we believe in giving hon-
always work, and so I’ve stopped even trying anything at the end. It’s really weird. This movie est feedback. … When you give that hon-
to say, “Don’t do that.” doesn’t land for me anymore.” est feedback, you can expect to get that
It’s this weird thing. If you ask people to tell honest feedback, because art at its core is
MOORHEAD: It’s purely logistical. We could
you where the movie is slowed down, or where subjective. So there aren’t any hurt feel-
leapfrog scenes, but that doesn’t really make
that’s happening, they’ll tell you which scenes it ings. … There could be something that
sense. Because you’ve got to marry the scenes
is. That doesn’t mean you should cut the scenes we just never thought of. MM
together, and they have to talk to each other.
And doing it in the same room is something
that we eventually have to do, but before
that, it’s just kind of a waste of time. … I do
not want to watch anyone edit, and I don’t
want somebody over my shoulder watching
me edit.
BENSON: One of the one of the scary things
about editing is you do a cut, you send it
to people to get some feedback, and ev-
eryone flags a scene as being too long: “It
really slowed down for me right here.” And
then you cut that scene as best you can.
And then you go show the movie to the • JAMIE DORNAN AS DENNIS IN SYNCHRONIC
MOVIEMAKER.COM FALL 2020 / COMPLETE GUIDE TO MAKING MOVIES 72 91
138_INTRO Post-Prodcution_DONE.indd 79 9/30/20 9:02 AM

4
POST-PRODUCTION
THE
FILM
COMES FIRST
News of the World editor William Goldenberg says
collaboration was essential to Paul Greengrass’ Tom Hanks
Western from the start BY WILLIAM GOLDENBERG
E
DITING NEWS OF THE WORLD to fans of Captain Phillips and the Jason Bourne
brought many challenges, some big, films. We would need to adapt—and we em-
PAUL some small and one that no one braced the challenge.
PHOTOS BY BRUCE TALAMON / UNIVERSAL PICTURES

GREENGRASS
could have imagined. I was very News of the World is a road film in which Tom
LINES UP A
SHOT FOR happy to have previously worked Hanks’ character, Captain Jefferson Kidd, must
NEWS OF THE with the film’s director, Paul Greengrass, on 22 escort an orphan girl (Helena Zengel) across
WORLD July, a gripping and powerful film about a ter- Texas to return her to her last living relatives.
ror attack. So I jumped at the chance to work Besides the challenges that can be inherent to
with Paul again. working with a child actor, we had a tight sched-
But this time would be different: News of ule, unpredictable weather and way more visual
the World is a Western, a genre we had never effects than you would expect.
done before, and one of the stars was 10 years The key to making it all work was collabora-
old. Additionally, it wouldn’t use Paul’s usual tion—on Paul’s part, and on the part of his team.
style of handheld first-person footage, familiar Paul involved me in News of the World from
137_Editing News of the World - William Goldenberg_DONE.indd 80 9/30/20 9:05 AM

HELENA ZENGEL WOWED EVERYONE WITH
HER COMMAND OF TWO LANGUAGES
the scenes lead the way. We trusted that the

plot was strong enough to take care of itself.
Our Second Lead

Helena was nine years old at the start of
shooting, and had only done one prior movie,
in German. Her grasp on English was shaky,
and she also needed to speak some Kiowa.
When a performance isn’t strong, you can
the beginning of screenwriting all the way meant he gave me free rein to try anything cut around it, but the style of this film lies in
to the end of post-production. It is rare for I felt strongly about, and put it right in the its sustained shots.
me to be so involved, and I loved the op- cut. Paul likes to keep his distance during We never needed to.
PHOTOS BY BRUCE TALAMON / UNIVERSAL PICTURES
portunity to give feedback when the script the editing process, so that he can be fresher To my pleasant surprise, Zengel held her
was still coming together—when the time for internal screenings, and he trusted me to own with everyone, charmed the entire set
came to edit, I was much more entrenched make decisions so he could focus on the film and had a pretty good grasp of English and
in the intention of each scene. Paul’s open- as a whole. Kiowa when it was all done. She is truly one
ness with me about his process continued of the most gifted actors I have had the plea-
when I arrived on-location in Santa Fe, The Next Episode sure to edit, and she dispelled my fears on
New Mexico, where we would speak about Speaking of the film as a whole: Making day one. There is a great amount of power in
what he had shot that day and was going a road film feel like one whole story and not the held take: Letting the audience look into
to shoot the next. I learned from his ability episodic was another challenge. The solution a character’s eyes and sit with the emotion of
to process opinions from everybody on set, turned out to be simple: focus on the internal a scene raises the subtext of a film, and both
and decide what was right for the film. This story of the characters, and let the subtext of Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel delivered.

4
POST-PRODUCTION
• IN NEWS OF THE WORLD , CAPTAIN JEFFERSON KIDD (TOM HANKS) MUST

ESCORT AN ORPHAN (HELENA ZENGEL) ACROSS A TREACHEROUS TERRAIN
Unexpected Challenges
Since Paul’s normal shooting style didn’t feel was working from home, which made sharing
appropriate for all elements of a Western, he and material much more complicated. Despite our
There is a
director of photography Dariusz Wolski worked new complications, we were all so grateful to still
out a more traditional style of shooting. This style be working, and grateful that the technology al-
great amount of
helped us to make the environment a character lowed us to still collaborate, that the new hurdles
in the film, because the rich beauty in wider shots seemed small.
power in the held

allows the audience to really live in the world of I love the working relationship I have with
the film. Paul, and I have been lucky enough to have
take: Letting the

We shot a big action sequence that is a center- a great relationship with all the directors I
piece of the film over many, many days with two work with. I think that has to do with being
audience look into

different units. Normally, in cases like this, the open to new ideas and criticism. One-on-one
second unit shoots the big action parts that need time with a director makes all the difference.
a character’s eyes
stunt doubles, and then I cut it together to see Sitting down together gives me a chance to get
what specific shots the first unit needs to shoot into the director’s head and understand his or
and sit with the

with the main actors. But because of logistical is- her vision. You always want directors to feel
sues, we had to shoot the first unit first. I worked that their vision is in good hands. My job is to
emotion of a scene
closely with the second unit to make sure they adapt to their vision and make them feel com-
PHOTO BY BRUCE TALAMON / UNIVERSAL PICTURES
shot everything we needed, which was a lot of fortable to speak and think freely. An editor
raises the subtext

pressure. But that made the success all the more needs to be able to cut film well, but also to be
rewarding. an expert politician, and part-time therapist.
of a film”
Every voice needs to be heard, and the editor
The Pandemic has to distill the right choices for the film
Of course, the biggest unexpected challenge without ruffling feathers. I need an original
was the pandemic. We were about to show the voice, but not to make the film all about me—
director’s cut to the studio in mid-March when the the film’s agenda comes first. MM
world shut down. I had two assistants in Los An-
geles, and two assistants along with a music editor News of the World is scheduled to open in
and a visual effects editor in London. Everyone theaters on December 25, from Universal Pictures.

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4
PO ST- PR OD UC TIO N
‘THE WRITER OF YOUR

OWN RESPONSE’ BY ROBERT GREENE
LEFT: COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS; RIGHT: COURTESY OF GARRETT BRADLEY
GARRETT BRADLEY’S TIME

INCLUDES FOX RICH’S PRIVATE
ARCHIVE AND BRADLEY’S FOOTAGE
84
137_TIME - Garrett Bradley_Robert Greene_DONE.indd 84 9/30/20 10:40 AM

G
ARRETT BRADLEY’S DOCUMEN- forward. I’d seen the M.I.A. doc [Steve Lov- storytelling, something that could be con-
TARY Time tracks the two-decade eridge’s Matangi/MAYA/M.I.A.] a year prior nected with dots, versus just being felt or
long struggle of Fox Rich and her at Sundance, and its co-editor Gabe Rhodes evoked. It would somehow not be me. Once I
family to free her husband, Robert, worked in a beautiful way with a strong let go of that, it opened up a whole other set
from prison. Shot beautifully in female lead, for lack of a better phrase— of possibilities.
black and white, with an extraordinary someone who was connected in a political
piano soundtrack by Ethiopian composer- way with the world, and who also had an GREENE: In terms of your voice, let’s talk
turned-nun Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam incredible personal archive. There was this about that footage that arrived from Fox.
Guèbrou, the film is made up of two distinct natural calling for what he could bring to the You’re making this film. Just like previously,
parts melded by Bradley and editor Gabe table in Time. you’re in control, and that’s what I love about
Rhodes. We follow Rich in the present day, your films: You are in control. “I’m making a
checking on her husband’s parole status, and short, dammit, and I know what it is. I know
her archive of the past. Bradley edited her what it looks like. I know what it tastes like.”
own past shorts, “America” and “Alone,” but And then all of a sudden, there’s an archive
realized she needed an outside voice to help of 20 years of material that just lands in
Time sing. Documentarian Robert Greene, your lap, where Fox reveals herself to be an
whose films include Kate Plays Christine and incredible filmmaker herself.
Actress, spoke with Bradley about her post-
production process. —MM BRADLEY: It’s always been important for me
in every project that the people I’m mak-
ROBERT GREENE: I am actually talking to you ing the film with are informing the creative
from my editing room right now. I cut all my choices. It’s not me imposing an aesthetic, or
films and I’ve cut other films, so I’m excited a form, or tone, or a vibe, onto somebody or
to talk. I can’t believe what you pulled off, a group. But the form is a reflection of them.
and the economy of what you were able to That inherently challenges the idea of the
do, and the depth of what you were able to auteur, this singular vision. Time for me is
achieve. Let’s start with the basics: Give me a two filmmakers coming together to make a
sense of what the editing process was like. third film, across time and space. What Fox
brought to the table was equal to what I’m
GARRETT BRADLEY: I started bringing as a filmmaker.
making films in relative soli- There were challenges that
tude, like a lot of us do. And
I picked up a certain skill set
It’s important that we find a way to allow the film was up against, which
was to justify the armor that
by necessity. I was editing be-
cause I didn’t know any other
these tools to do something much bigger and Fox had accumulated over
time. So the woman I met
editors. So I started to figure
things out on my own, and in
much more profound than simply observe.” 19 years into the process of
her husband’s incarceration
the process of doing that, it had armor around her over
helped me develop my own
- GARRETT BRADLEY the course of having to go to
aesthetic. You couldn’t really parole hearings multiple times
LEFT: COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS; RIGHT: COURTESY OF GARRETT BRADLEY
separate the footage from the way in which a year, every year, and the requirement of be-
it was edited. Because of that solitude, it was ing presentational, having to present yourself
ROBERT GREENE: Garrett, I’m looking at my
a linear dialogue happening between both to a committee, having to be exceptional. A
fucking footage right now. The cut’s going
phases of production. But I felt that I had lot of her archive shows Fox in her youth, in
well, but it’s still got all my bullshit in there
reached a glass ceiling, and I knew where a sort of free spirit.
that I’m struggling through and processing.
my weaknesses were and that I was leaning
It’s inspiring to hear and see you retain every
on my instincts and my own inclinations GREENE: The images in her footage are so cin-
bit of your voice and give up a lot in that col-
toward visual poetry. I wasn’t pushing myself ematic. A little bit of this armor that you’re
laborative process.
to think about how to connect the dots and talking about is present in the early material,
reinforce emotion from a place that is more but you also see that the camera was therapy
BRADLEY: It begs the question: What is our
practical, linear even. from the beginning, even.
voice? What is it that we think that we’re
I thought Time was going to be a short You said it beautifully: The entire idea of
retaining? Those were the central questions
13-minute film—I was so adamant about that the documentary auteur is contradictory in
that I was being faced with. On a very real
shit. Working with Concordia as a studio was a beautiful way. It’s the reason why I do this
level, I had signed some kind of unspoken
about expanding the collaborative process: work. It’s probably why you do this work. I
contract with myself that I wasn’t capable of
working in an editing bay with an editor, love the tension between my ideas and then
any other type of storytelling—that if I did
and trying to push some of these elements what the real world and the people I’m work-
that, it would be mainstream, that legible

4 POST-PRODUCTION
ing with have to say about my ideas. That maker myself, there’s a lot that I respect Then we see Fox break down. We see that
doesn’t invalidate my ideas, and it doesn’t and see in myself and aspire to in the way mask drop; we see that change in her where
invalidate the real world. That’s why I’m in which Fox has moved through the world, she goes from being someone who’s complete-
excited about this kind of work. and how she has maintained her autonomy ly in control of every single word, to someone
The opening six minutes is all Fox’s foot- and individuality despite the systematic who isn’t. Because you’ve done such a good job
age—it feels like a gift to the audience. Then attempts to rid her of those things. It’s a of editing her, we haven’t seen that yet, and it’s
the first thing we see of Fox in the present celebration of that authorship, and a re- so powerful.
day, of your material, is her doing a com- claiming of one’s own narrative. The effort
mercial. It’s a great scene that shows her in and commitment to illuminating examples BRADLEY: In Time, I frame this idea of pre-
control of her image. What is that structural of that in history and in the present mo- sentation, as both a form of oppression and
decision to open up with six minutes of ment are extremely important. resistance. Just as in “America,” Bert Williams
footage, and then the first time we see her, was forced to wear blackface in order to corral
we see her in this very controlled scenario GREENE: There’s a moment where we watch an entire integrated cast and crew in 1913,
where she’s working with a white camera Fox perform on the phone call, and what I several years after Plessy v. Ferguson. But that
guy, which has reverberations for me think- mean by perform, is that she has this whole did not take away his power. In fact, there’s a
ing about representation and what it means ritual of trying to be as nice as possible. It’s lot of power in his nuances. It was the same
to work with someone. She’s very much in not that it’s inauthentic at all. For me, per- situation with Fox: the prison industrial com-
control of that image. How does that help us formance never means inauthentic, it means plex, parole boards which one is required to go
understand who she is? finding truth through careful construction of to over a course over 21 years, multiple times
words and phrases and gestures. a year sometimes, the effect that that has on
BRADLEY: It was important as a filmmaker On the other end of the call, you hear that the human psyche, and the expectation that
to immediately understand that this film is Southern niceness, which we can discern is was put on her and her family of presenting
going to tell a story on the family’s terms, probably a white woman. Being from the themselves in the form of black exceptional-
and those terms are no different than my South, that voice, the fake politeness that’s ism, of being perfect—it isn’t as simple as just
own as a filmmaker. We are together on the just to get you to not ask any other ques- saying that it’s a matter of oppression. Fox has
same agenda. As a Black woman, as a film- tions, is so palpable to me. You see Fox say found a way to also use that armor as a form
everything correctly, she changes her tone, of resistance and as a form of self love.
she gives a different version of her perfor- And so in that moment, we needed to un-
mance. And then she’s met with this wall of derstand all of that context of why the armor
TIME SHOWS THE IMPACT OF AN bullshit basically that she’s had to deal with is necessary. Where does it come from? How
INCARCERATION ON AN ENTIRE FAMILY for 20 years. does one maneuver through it, in order for
COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS

• TIME FOLLOWS FOX RICH AND HER HUSBAND, ROBERT
the passion that we see from Fox towards anger pops through, and it’s so powerful. doesn’t diminish the rage. In fact, it puts
the end of the film, to be fully understood the rage where it should be, rather than in
in a universal sense, by people who do not BRADLEY: I love that idea of being the a caricature, which is often the case in a
understand or have any relationship with writer of your own response. It’s also being lot of films. You put it in the right place by
what the bureaucracy of the system is? If the writer of your future. Because you’re the way that we have come to understand
that scene had opened the film, it would manifesting it, you’re anticipating, and you’re Fox over the course of the film. You don’t
not have the same impact. It would not controlling. There’s a history we as Black diminish your rage at all. In fact, it magni-
have done the same thing, because it would Americans in this country have been forced fies it in exactly the way that it should be.
not have allowed audiences to participate into. There’s been a systematic attempt at I understand, as best I can as a viewer in
in the bureaucracy and in the frustration, keeping us in places of observation and inac- that moment, how she’s feeling, and it’s so
which is part of the whole point of the film, tion. In observation, there’s a lot of wisdom, profound.
which is to get us to feel connected in that and that comes from that knowledge when
journey. put in a position of watching. So there’s BRADLEY: It’s funny, I was watching some-
something very important about Fox and thing last night, and there was something
GREENE: That’s so beautifully stated. Those about what Bert Williams in “America” is just so irritating to me about this fine line,
are editorial decisions that are so precise in trying to be, which is that they are using the which is that as filmmakers we can teeter
the film, because it’s one thing to say, “we parameters of observation, and they are tacti- on our own obsession and self-aggrandiz-
need to show strength,” which is of course cally, and intelligently, taking action within ing, around the very fact that a camera
the case. We need to not succumb to the the parameters. can record something. We’re sitting in
victimization that the documentary camera our own amazement that it can document
often creates, because that is a net negative. GREENE: Often what documentary filmmak- something, and that’s just not enough.
But to make the choices to use what those ers are looking for is the moment where It’s important that we find a way to allow
subjects give you and then magnify that someone breaks down. And effectively what these tools to do something much bigger
and then strip it away in this “breakdown they’re looking for is like, I have this camera and much more profound than simply
moment,” it does so much for us. It’s such observing you, and there’s a whole history observe. MM
a gift to the audience, because we’ve been of what that means, which you just hinted
brought in, in a certain way, and then we’re to, and then you’re waiting for a breakdown.
taken in another place. Every single word It’s almost like, “Show me Black rage.” The Time opens in theaters October 9 and is
from Fox is so precise. She is a writer of her way Time is contextualized, in that you see available to stream on Amazon Prime Video
own response. And then in one moment, the the opposite of that up until this point, it on October 20.

4
TURNING
PO ST-
PR OD UC TIO N
SOUND
INTO A The Sound of Metal director Darius Marder and sound supervisor
DIGI
Nicolas Becker captured the pain of a metal musician going deaf
BY CALEB HAMMOND
T A L T
HE SOUND OF METAL IS ABOUT A DRUMMER NAMED RUBEN,
played by Riz Ahmed, who loses his hearing. His girlfriend and lead
singer, Lou (Olivia Cooke), helps convince him to join a deaf community
in the country, but losing music has wrecked him. Ruben grapples with
MONS
whether to join the deaf community more completely, or take a shot at an
expensive implant procedure that could bring sound back. Director Darius Marder
spoke with sound designer and co-composer Nicolas Becker on how they developed
the immersive soundscape of The Sound of Metal on an independent budget.
DARIUS MARDER: We certainly set out to really shake up what was possible in this
T E R
realm within this kind of budget, and it was a challenge. It felt entirely crazy. It’s
hard enough to get a budget together to make an independent film—you’re basi-
cally scraping pennies. In our case with The Sound of Metal, it was crazy to then be
saying, one, that we’re shooting on film and two, what we’re going to do with sound
design may well be as complex as any action film.
The Sound of Metal script attracted a lot of sound people for obvious reasons,
and I certainly could have talked to some big studios that have fancy Dolby Atmos
setups, and could have gotten pretty good package deals, etc. I just couldn’t pull the
trigger. I didn’t feel like it was right. It wasn’t until I got
connected with Nicolas through a music pro-
ducer friend [who] said, “There’s this guy, and
he’s kind of a sound genius. He’s really unlike
OLIVIA anyone. He sounds like who you need.”

COOKE AS And Nicolas and I spoke on the phone
LOU IN THE
SOUND OF about this story, this idea of sound and specifi-
METAL cally process. And by process, I mean, not just
post-production, but actual process: pre-
production, production, and post all mirroring
and mimicking the process that Ruben goes
137_Sound of Metal - Darius Marder + Nicholas Beckeri_Tim to Review.indd 88 9/30/20 9:24 AM

didn’t block sound, but emitted a white
noise that didn’t allow Riz to hear his own
RIZ AHMED’S voice. They made him go into a place of a
DRUMMING SEQUENCES lack of control.
IN THE SOUND OF
That was a real test, in the audiologist of-
METAL WERE
NOT FAKED. fice sequence where Ruben is doing a sound
test to see where his hearing was. Riz had
those hearing things in, and I had control
of them on my phone. Everything Riz said,
everything he could and couldn’t hear, was
real. It wasn’t faked, just like the music in
the beginning of the movie was real. It kind
of dared the actors and the world to be real,
and we’d live and die with that. After we did
that intense shoot in the office, Nicolas spent
a good amount of time in that booth with
Riz, mic’ing his eyelids and down his throat,
really getting into the minutiae of that mo-
ment with Riz’s literal, physical inner body.
Coming back to that chamber that we discov-
ered in France, in a vacuum we go within.
through in the story. Could we create a pro- That’s a change in the way that produc-
cess that was as much a transformation for tion usually operates: Nicolas came to the set
the audience as it was for this character? I with his contact mics and a whole bunch of
followed that up by flying to France. crazy interesting tools, rather than just hang-
ing back and waiting for post-production. I
NICOLAS BECKER: We met in my house in
might be shooting within the deaf communi-
the middle of the garden in Paris. ty or filming Ruben drumming or something,
and I’d see Nicolas mic’ing the same scene
MARDER: Coincidentally, we ended up visit-
underwater, picking up strange vibrations
ing this sound chamber in Paris that was
from the perspective of an underwater mi-
kind of an anti-sound chamber that is one
crophone or a contact mic. We were always
of the few in the world that simulates on
looking for how we can perceive sonically in
an acoustic level the feeling of soundless-
a different and more specific way.
ness, literally, a vacuum of sound.
BECKER: You asked everybody to involve
BECKER: What is interesting in that cham-
themselves in the process not only with hear-
ber is that you start to
ing, but with their
hear your inner being:
bodies and lives. It
It was important to put the people in the situation
your heart, your blood
was a full experience.
pressure. You start to
MARDER: Exactly,
where they feel that the actors are not acting, they are
hear all the very tiny
sounds you can pro- everything as experi-
not faking playing instruments—that everything is real.”

duce from your body. ence. That’s certainly
So it’s a bit like, going my theory on film-
into your inner-body making in general.
experience. —NICOLAS BECKER Carlos Reygadas uses
When trying to the word “presence”
create a process which resonates with the memory of sounds. So we understood that as something he’s after, and I very much
meaning of the film, it’s the same way I work we had a lot to exchange. relate to this idea of presence, that you feel
with conceptual artists. Darius and I are on a screen, that you feel in a film that you
MARDER: Every one of these kinds of explor-
positioned on opposite ends in a way: He hear. Presence isn’t something that you feel
atory sensory moments that we were having,

is a storytelling master, developing charac- by faking your way there. It’s certainly what
which were fun and rich, informed the movie
ter, writing dialogue. And me, I’m taking moves me and gets me up every day. Pres-
in a deep way. Nicolas and I talked a lot
everything on that is not dialogue-driven sto- ence has to be found in a lifelike experience.
about process and experience rather than
rytelling. I operate in the world of sensation, We were always after lifelike experiences
product as informing a final film.
trying to create moods or waves between the in pre-production, production and post and
The process on the shoot was that Riz
sensations, creating a link between your own that related to the opening scene—it’s hard to
wore specific ear pieces inside his ears, that

4 POST-PRODUCTION
• RUBEN FACES THE TOUGH DECISION OF WHETHER TO

INTEGRATE FULLY INTO THE DEAF COMMUNITY
imagine the amount of time we spent just on tion and reconstruction process was creating for each and every layer of sound. At that
the concert that begins the movie. a lot of interesting artifacts which were very point, we had this colossal mess of sound
close to the materials I heard with Darius, that was starting to approximate this
BECKER: I think we spent nearly half of the
when we were exploring simulations of the implant experience.
time working on the score on that first concert.
implant experience. Then we went further, which was to
That’s because if, as an audience, you believe in
diagram the sound in the mind. One of the
that stunning scene, then you can go anywhere, MARDER: Everything in the movie is lead-
interesting aspects of this process when
we can bring people every- ing up to that point when
you get these implants, is that you lose di-
where. It was important Ruben gets those implants.
rectionality. The ear is such a sophisticated
to put the people in the It’s literally in the title of the
instrument: We take in sound, and then our
situation where they feel movie: The Sound of Metal.
brain makes sense of it. And our brain or-
that the actors are not The first part is “sound,” so
ganizes it so that when we hear something,
acting, they are not faking we’re dealing with organic
we go, “Oh, it’s over there.” That’s why our
playing instruments—that sound and the sound of their
sound relates so much to our balance. In
everything is real. music and it has to be real
this process we have processed each and
We also tried to under- so that you feel it. And then
every sound in a way that we thought was
stand and simulate what you have the “of” piece which
interesting and true. (Again, it’s turning
you can effectively hear is being part “of” that group
natural sound into a digital monster.) Then
when you have this kind of and “of” the deaf community.
we actually moved the sounds around in
problem. We went to field And then you have the third
Ruben’s brain, because you’re in Ruben’s
journalists, and I spoke act, which is “metal.” And
brain, and we moved them around so that
with people who knew the metal is literal metal in
you have no orientation. If you listen to
about cognitive perception. Ruben’s head at this point.
this in surround sound, you will be lost
Some are born deaf and We know, in fact, the sounds
within his mind in a way that you can gain
others become deaf, so af- that you hear, that we created
no purchase. And that’s what people go
ter those who become deaf in the movie to approximate
through when they get their hearing “fixed”
try these implants that Ru- that experience, is actually
like this. For people that have never heard
ben eventually gets, from THE SOUND OF METAL much nicer than the sound
DIRECTOR DARIUS MARDER
before, who go into this implant world, it
their memory of sound you would actually hear, if
can be pretty interesting, exciting, and even
they can describe what you got one of these implants.
moving, because they’re literally hearing
they can hear from these If we had actually gone into
sound for the first time. But when people
implants. And some universities have dialogue the full realm of what we understood of the
who knew sound like Ruben, especially mu-
and music treatments to try to simulate, and experience, it would have been almost impos-
sicians, return to sound, it can be devastat-
this helped us understand what kind of infor- sible to listen to. As it is, it’s pretty grueling. It
ing. There is no listening to music again—
mation this implant is sending to the brain. has to be.
it doesn’t work. The brain can’t process

It reminded me of software out of IRCAM, The process we used was to actually take
that; there’s no beauty in that. So it’s a
the music research institute in France, where all of this production sound, and we system-
profound loss. MM
they are working on the modulation of the atically broke down each and every layer. And
voice and acoustic space—they really go into when I say each and every layer, I’m talking
it. They have a tool where you can actually de- about maybe 20 to 30 layers of Atmos that The Sound of Metal is scheduled to open
compose sound into different things like noise we had recorded on set. We took every single in theaters on November 20, and will be
or only information—you can also deconstruct layer of sound, and we decoded. We did a available to stream on Amazon Prime Video
audio and then reconstruct it. The deconstruc- digital pass, and a very specific composing on December 4, from Amazon Studios.

5
J movie, was made completely in a
vacuum with us not knowing anyone
or anything. Somehow it got into
the Tribeca Film Festival. The lore
is it was actually in a garbage can at one point,
and someone thought the rejection notes were
interesting. And then somehow it got into the
festival. And we were lucky enough to sell to
Tribeca Film, and they were great. We had a
DISTRIBUTION
BY JUSTIN BENSON, AARON MOORHEAD AND DAVID LAWSON AS TOLD TO CALEB HAMMOND
USTIN BENSON: Resolution, our first to us if you could modify the plans based off
of what the film is, or what people love about
the film, or what audiences are going to be at-
tracted to, that would be ideal.
But also, we live in a world that has unique
circumstances. And we live in a world where if
you need to secure investment, you should pre-
sell. If I were an investor,
that’s what I would do.
BENSON: With every
PEOPLE DM US
• JUSTIN
BENSON (L)
AND AARON
MOOREHEAD
contract with understands your film, because

that’s something the three of us have talked
about, and we’ve passed on opportunities be-
cause they didn’t quite get what we were saying.
If they don’t get the film, it’s tough for them to
understand how to market the film and make
sure the film finds the correct home.
MOORHEAD: We often speak
to young filmmakers. People
DM us on Twitter. We’re open
great relationship.
I’ll fast forward. Spring was made roughly
distributor we’ve ever been ON TWITTER. … about that. People who want
with, we’ve had an amaz- to reach out, we’ll talk. We’re
the same way. No pre-buys. It somehow got into
the Toronto Film Festival. It sold. We found a
ing relationship, where WE WILL TOTALLY just on Twitter. We will totally
they’ve taken almost all talk to you about making
distributor at Drafthouse Films and lots of other
distributors all around the world. The Endless,
of our input for all of the TALK TO YOU ABOUT movies.
marketing materials, all
we found a financier on that one, but again, we
just went and made it, somehow got into a big
the posters, all the trail- MAKING MOVIES.” BENSON: You get really excited
by the first theatrical release
ers, anything that’s ever of your movie. Oftentimes,
film festival and it sold at the film festival.
gone out to the world. the theatrical release is very
Synchronic was a little bit different.
Interestingly, we also small, but it is exciting, and
AARON MOORHEAD: In this case, because it’s got a travel with our films a lot it’s great. But then it goes to
slightly larger budget, rightfully so, the financier to film festivals, where we get to see people’s physical media, or video on demand, and then
wanted to try to guarantee some of the invest- reactions. We’d ask festival goers, “Of all the all these other people see it. And there’s another
ment up front. And so there was a domestic and things, why did you pick this movie? Why did wave at Blu-ray and DVD—all these are exciting
partial international presale, just based on the you pick The Endless?” And we thought the waves. But now, the biggest wave is obviously
streaming, and it’s sort of the last stop, and the
script and the actors. Normally when you make answer would be because it’s mind-bending. We
day your movie comes out on streaming...
a movie, your premiere night is nerve-wracking, thought people loved mind-bending stuff. Actu-
You wake up one morning like, “I guess the
because if nobody bids on it, nobody will ever ally they said, “No, I just love stuff about cults.”
movie hit Netflix or Amazon because there’s a
see your movie. It’s really scary. And so we got to be able to turn around
PHOTO COURTESY OF WELL GO USA ENTERTAINMENT
million tweets about it now.”

So knowing that your film has distribution in to the distributors, and this happened many
advance is an incredible relief. But I don’t think times... MOORHEAD: One day Guillermo del Toro was
it is very common for anything that doesn’t sick and was drinking a lot of cough medi-
BENSON: All over the world.
have movie stars. I could be wrong—maybe it’s cine and watched Spring, and then sent out
different for super celebrity directors—but I’m MOORHEAD: So we got to turn around to the dis- a bunch of effusive, beautiful tweets about
pretty sure foreign and domestic presales only Spring. And it was like the movie got re-
tributor and say, let’s not make mind-bending
really exist based off of movie stars, with very released. It’s really cool that your distribution
posters, let’s make a cult poster. And they said,
rare exceptions. never actually ends. MM
“That’s a great idea.”
The only thing that’s strange about it is that
all of the ideas about how to distribute the film DAVID LAWSON: Make sure the company that Synchronic opens in theaters on October 23,
are decided before the film is made. It seems you’re thinking about signing a distribution from Well Go USA Entertainment.
138_INTRO Distribution_DONE.indd 58 9/30/20 9:26 AM

5
DISTRIBUT ION
LOVE YOUR IP,

OWN YOUR IP:
THE STORY OF
How Codie Elaine and Tommy
Oliver made their dream project,
ence on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pin-
terest, and YouTube, and hold live events
featuring our couples and exclusive—often
BLACK LOVE
and kept 100 percent ownership unaired—clips from the series.
We are able to do all of this because
BY CODIE ELAINE OLIVER we own all of our own IP and license it to
OWN.
I
First, let me back up and tell you a little
N AUGUST 2017, MY HUSBAND Hardrict, actor Flex Alexander and his wife about us.
Tommy Oliver and I premiered our and musical artist Shanice, and Grammy- In September 2013, a woman doing PR
docuseries, Black Love, on OWN: the award winning musicians Erica and War- for Canon Cinema Cameras and a man who
Oprah Winfrey Network. It drew 1.2 ryn Campbell, to name a few. just made his directorial debut at the To-
million viewers, breaking the record With minimal outdoor advertising ronto Film Festival met in the Canon/Hol-
for the most-watched unscripted premiere (which we paid for), a premiere at the Mar- lywood Reporter Lounge, and one of them
on the network. The series highlights love tha’s Vineyard African American Film Fes- hit on the other. Hint: It was me who hit
stories from Black married couples and ex- tival (which we applied and sent ourselves on him. The attraction was there, but we
amines the reality of what it takes to make to), advertising on OWN, and one tweet have spent years explaining to people that
love last for the long haul. Featured couples from Oprah, we made a splash. Now four he was too focused on his movie (and a
in the four-episode season included Viola seasons in, and with the fifth premiering recent ex) to realize I was flirting with him.
Davis and husband Julius Tennon, actress in 2021, we have built a media company It wasn’t until I mentioned my background
Meagan Good and husband DeVon Frank- with several components inclusive of at USC’s Peter Stark Producing Program
lin, Tia Mowry and her actor husband Cory BlackLove.com, a robust social media pres- that I saw stars in his eyes, and then love
137 Black Love - Codie Oliver_DONE.indd 58 9/30/20 9:29 AM

TOMMY OLIVER’S tips if you want to own your IP:
You must understand You have to have Understand the Figure out if you Patience is a big, deal to close as soon
that it is possible. a desire to make business implications, have the leverage big, big part of as possible. But one
Everyone doesn’t get sacrifices for it. the legal process, to do it, or if you dealmaking. Many of the biggest assets
this, and, as such, and the long-term have something to times, we creatives are is time, so you can let
many people may implications, both give up. so desperate for cash people get to where
discourage you. good and bad. flow that we want the you need them.
grew quickly. We discussed the idea for because it’s one of the biggest reasons we show could be. As such, we wanted to
Black Love just weeks into dating, and by were able to license this show—by the time make sure we were in the best position
January, we had convinced Canon to give we “pitched,” it was a completed series. possible to do what we thought was best
us an equipment loan for the project. One Tommy was repped at CAA after his direc- for the show and the brand. So, first, we
year after we met, we were engaged and torial debut in 2013, so with their help, we took a much much lower license fee in
shooting Black Love with couples all over went out to networks with a completed exchange for retaining ownership and the
the country. first episode and a treatment and sizzle for ability to exploit other rights. The OWN
It’s important to note that Tommy and the full season. Distributors knew exactly execs were open to creative dealmaking.
I set out to film a documentary, so we what they were getting and we weren’t Notably, the executive vice president of
treated the project that way. We were go- interested in changing our vision. programming and development at the
ing to go the festival route once the work OWN was my first choice from the mo- time, Jon Sinclair, and then-head of busi-
was complete, and so we didn’t spend any ment I had the idea for Black Love, long ness affairs, now president of OWN, Tina
amount of time working on pitch Perry, were supportive, in part because
materials for a TV show. We did, how- of Oprah’s legacy. Her ownership of
ever, pursue a few grants and doc labs, The Oprah Winfrey Show allowed her
and often found ourselves explaining opportunities and expansion that she
our project to people who just didn’t may not have otherwise had. They ap-
see it. We were turned down by the preciated what we were trying to build
best of them. Simply put, Black Love and wanted to be supportive. Addition-
features couples talking about their ally, what it really came down to was
relationship highs and lows on their that the license fee was low enough
couches at home. There’s no footage that they were willing to take a chance
of them having breakfast in their on it. (Seriously, it was laughably low.)
kitchen. No individual interviews. No Tommy once commented to me
anecdotes from friends and family. It’s that getting our IP compares to me
just their experiences, perspectives SALLI RICHARDSON-WHITFIELD AND DONDRÉ WHITFIELD wanting a VBAC—a vaginal birth after
and growth moments. We were told ON BLACK LOVE . cesarean. Stay with me here. This is
time and time again that there should an uncommon birthing process, and
be more to it, but we just didn’t think it it takes time to find an OB-GYN and
was necessary. before I met my husband. The authentic- a hospital that are supportive of it. it. To
We shot over 50 couples from fall 2014 ity and humanity in Oprah’s body of work make it more complicated, having twins
to summer 2016 with our own money, and her mission were completely in line equals a high-risk pregnancy. Similarly,
one grant from a little-known California with how I viewed this series, and OWN you’ll need to find exactly the right lawyer
arts nonprofit, and donations from family jumped on the project right away. We were and the right network or distributor to be
friends. Probably one of the most impor- unaware of how they viewed ownership, successful when you’re negotiating your
tant factors to our project is that we did but that worked in our favor as well. own IP.
everything ourselves. We both produced. As soon as we decided to create an ongo- There are plenty of networks that would
Tommy was also the cinematographer and ing series, Tommy knew right away that never have been on board with this. There
gaffer. I direct, mic the couples, and ask he wanted us to own the IP. He was partly are tons of lawyers who may have brushed
questions. Oh, and Tommy also gets stills motivated by his experience with split rights it off as well. There’s more back-and-forth,
“on set.” Doing it ourselves allowed for deals dating back to his first film in 2011, and more time taken, and not every-
more intimate conversations with couples, but beyond that, he knew that there was one will be up for that. It’s possible we
PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOMMY OLIVER
but also kept our production costs down. real short- and long-term value in what we wouldn’t be able to make the same deal at
As we started to cut an assembly of the were doing. We always planned to launch OWN today. Business needs change, corpo-
doc in early 2016, it became clear that our website, BlackLove.com, to expand the rate needs change, etc.
we couldn’t do justice to the stories or a conversations around love past romance, In some ways we were lucky, but luck is
potential audience by limiting the project but the ownership would most directly al- the meeting of preparation and opportu-
to 90 minutes. That’s when Black Love the low us to exploit the rights in perpetuity. nity, and we were prepared for this oppor-
docuseries was born. I mention all of this We believed in the show and what the tunity in every way we could control. MM
137 Black Love - Codie Oliver_DONE.indd 93 9/30/20 9:29 AM

5 DISTRIBUTION
DISTRIBUTION,
DEMYSTIFIED
Here’s what we’ve learned about distribution on our first indie feature— When we set out to sell Souvenirs, we
and some honest numbers decided to document every stage of the
process to help filmmakers who are as
new to the process as we used to be. You
BY JESS JACKLIN
can watch our series, Demystified, on our
YouTube channel, StudioFest. But here’s
the gist of what we’ve learned.
I
Distribution is an ever-evolving
’M GOING TO TELL YOU submissions from screenwriters and enigma of a process. The players and the
SOMETHING most moviemak- directors, and then pair up a writer and formats are changing. This is especially
ers hate to talk about: how director, with a budget of $50,000 to true now that the world has turned
much it cost to make our debut make a film in a year. Another thing that upside-down. What is the future of movie
film, Souvenirs, and how much sounds crazy: It worked. Souvenirs, writ- theatres? How do we think about stream-
money we’ve made from it, so ten by Matthew Sorvillo and directed by ing platforms and self-distribution in the
far. But first, I want to tell you Anna Mikami, is a coming-of-age thriller pandemic?
how we got to this point. about a murderabilia shop clerk who One thing that has been consistent,
Years ago, Charles Beale and I, partners discovers her own family’s dark history. though, is a stifling lack of transpar-
in moviemaking and life, were taking short We’re currently in pre-production on the ency when it comes to actual numbers.
films to festivals, and found that many of second StudioFest feature. We found ourselves trying to navigate
them weren’t especially helpful. We met It hasn’t been a long time since the proper budgeting blindly, with no real
great people, but no one who was interested whole process began, but in reflecting idea of what the market value for our
PHOTO BY STUDIOFEST
or able to help us actually make and sell back, it feels like we’ve overcome a pretty film might be.
a feature film, which was our goal. So we steep learning curve in a short period of So we tried to create a case study
started our own festival, StudioFest. time. The toughest part is, some of it I feel around Souvenirs, sharing what we
I know, that sounds crazy: We started I might have to unlearn in order to sleep learned about the numbers. The film, a
our own festival. The idea was to take better at night. thriller made in small town Michigan,
137_Distribution - Studiofest_DONE.indd 58 9/30/20 9:33 AM

Searching online for information from other producers, we didn’t have a sales agent
moviemakers, we got the sense that they when we were looking to distribute.
didn’t want to, or—per their contracts— Furthermore, we’ve been told that you
weren’t allowed to talk any real numbers. have to be very vigilant about the repu-
We had heard that the American Film tation of a sales agent. So we found
Market was a good place for buyers and AFM to be the best back door into the
sellers to meet. So with our counterpart Jake industry, given all the distributors that
Bowen, Charles and I decided that we should are there. If you spend the money for
figure out a way to meet with people there, a ticket, you get access to a directory
show them our trailer, and see if they would where their emails are listed. Since
be interested in buying the film. they’re sitting in hotel rooms setting
At AFM, we heard a lot of things about meetings all day, you can usually get
what drives foreign sales. It often felt that some responses.
from one meeting to the next, you heard And we did: We actually met a dis-
people paroting the same information. tributor at AFM and signed a distribution
They all talked about the importance of deal with them. Glass House Distribu-
genre: Generally, films with less pacing tion is relatively new to the scene and
and less genre focus were harder to sell to has a small roster of films, most notably,
foreign territories. We heard that horror the SXSW film Ms White Light, starring
• JESS JACKLIN AND
CHARLES IRVING BEALE, tends to do well, while drama tends to be Judith Light and Tracks, a romantic com-
FOUNDERS OF STUDIOFEST very difficult to sell without edy that premiered
AND PRODUCERS name talent attached. One at Raindance. After
OF SOUVENIRS . distributor even told us that
making a feature-length
We didn’t much back-and-forth
with our lawyer, we
drama without recognizable
talent might leave you with
know how exactly signed a deal that
guaranteed that Glass
a film “only your mom will
watch.” Someone else called
a film gets sold. House would earn us
at least $25,000 in the
without big Hollywood talent, was a labor

an indie documentary about
a personal story “unsellable”
Can you cold call first year and $85,000
in the second and
of love. In many ways, we were feeling our
way through the dark. The film has so far
and “a two-hour family
album with no audience.”
a distributor? Do third years in order
to retain the rights to
played at Dances With Films and will be
shown at Soho International Film Festival,
This sort of feedback felt
particularly harsh. Anyone
you need a sales Souvenirs.
We’re nearing the
but it didn’t headline any of the big market
festivals like Sundance or Tribeca.
who has ever attended AFM
will tell you that it can make
agent? We had no end of year one and
have secured distribu-
The film was produced for $80,000 cash,
but as we learned after talking with some
you cynical fast. There are
plenty of garbage movies that
real answers.” tion in the UK, Canada
and Vietnam, and are
helpful distributors, we had to account for a are clearly chasing trends. in the midst of negoti-
ton of in-kind services to calculate the real There are moments when ating more territories.
value of Souvenirs. Through StudioFest, we your impulse is to hit pause and stop looking. Our goal, of course, is to make more than
were able to barter with partners includ- Is this really what sells? the $200,000 that we made the film for,
ing Marmoset Music, ShareGrid and Heard An uneasy feeling creeps over you after but we were told to really only expect the
City for music, camera gear and a sound two days in a marketplace. There’s an in- minimums in the contract.
mix, respectively. Additionally, we got many evitable disconnect between your artistic We hope our transparency around
locations comped, our families helped us ambitions and what you’re told will sell. the numbers and the process will help
house and feed people, and we pulled as This is probably the part where you might you and all indie filmmakers pave a new
many strings as possible to keep the quality find yourself up at night, wishing maybe you way forward where the goal isn’t just
high. When all was said and done, we feel could unsee a few things. to make your money back, but to earn
we actually made a $200,000 film. After talking to several distributors, we a decent profit and become sustainable
PHOTO BY STUDIOFEST
The next part of the process, however, still found it all to be a bit bleak. Gener- filmmakers. MM
was a complete unknown: Selling it. We ally speaking, not many of them are open
didn’t know how exactly a film gets sold. to cold calls unless the film is at one of Jess Jacklin is a Brooklyn-based
Can you cold call a distributor? Do you the big festival markets, and they usually filmmaker/producer and co-founder of
need a sales agent? We had no real answers. only work with sales agents. As first-time indie start-up StudioFest.
137_Distribution - Studiofest_DONE.indd 95 9/30/20 9:34 AM

T HIS LIST OF THE WORLD’S
50 BEST GENRE FESTS
originated at a dinner in Park
City, Utah last winter, at the
Slamdance Film Festival. Team
MovieMaker was seated across from
Alok Mishra, a film producer who
program. 1iota collected and tabu-
lated the data using its proprietary
platform, Fanalytic, then compiled
the results. We then gathered com-
ments from filmmakers who had
attended the festivals, and contacted
the festivals themselves in search of
was deep into production on 1BR, a any details we might have missed.
horror movie that would soon rise to All of the following dates are for
the top of the Netflix charts. the next planned editions of each
One thing, though: He thought festival, and of course many festivals
our lists were bogus. Did festivals that are now planned as in-person
pay to be on them? Did we just events may opt to go virtual, as
choose our friends? What was the many have this year.
criteria? We don’t know when we’ll next
We explained that no one can get to sit across from anyone at a
buy their way in, and that while festival dinner. But we do know that
we hope to be a friend to all film every festival listed here represents
festivals, especially in these fond memories of the thrills it has
trying times for cinema, we provided in the past, and fervent
don’t socialize with anyone hopes for the future. Here is our list
who runs the festivals of the World’s 50 Best Genre Festi-
below. And in hopes of vals, featuring events from 40 cities,
total transparency—and six continents and 16 countries.
making this list as
helpful as possible Another Hole in the Head
to moviemakers San Francisco / Nov. 29-Dec. 13 / ahith.com
and audi- A spirit of innovation and fun
ences—we pervades this festival, which helped
invited movie lovers through quarantine
Alok to get this summer with Zoom screenings
Here are the involved in

the process.
that included a silent film version
of Star Wars. AHH, entering its 17th
best places We’re grate-
ful that he did.
year, is all about such innovation,
aspiring to make audiences recon-
on earth to be He formed a panel
of experts who are deeply
sider what we consider a “genre
film.” It’s based out of the New
awed, scared plugged into genre festivals
from horror to fantasy to sci-fi. We
People Cinema in San Francisco’s
Japantown, a 143-seat underground
and thrilled assembled a list of criteria that
included the quality of the audience,
venue equipped with HD digital
projection, 35mm film projection
atmosphere, curation, events, presen- and a THX-certified sound system.
tation, host city, and public relations Our panelists gave it especially high
and social outreach of each festival, marks for the festival team, the
as well as the money stuff: whether location, and the diversity of the
BY TIM MOLLOY distributors attend, the effective- programmers, filmmakers, audience
ness of the festival as a marketplace, and selections. One filmmaker who
and whether the festival pays for attended says a personal highlight
moviemakers’ travel. We also focused was “going to some cheap karaoke
PRESENTED BY
on the festivals’ diversity in terms of bar in the Japanese District nearby
programming teams, films, filmmak- with all the programmers! Drinks,
ers, and audiences. discussing film and bad singing. CREDIT TK SHUTTERSTOCK/MOVIEMAKER
1iota Productions, which special- What’s not to love?”

izes in connecting fans with thou-
sands of live events, coordinated Arrow Video Fright Fest
the survey, verifying its security and London / Oct. 22-25 / frightfest.co.uk
asking participants to rate and an- This fest, celebrating its 21st year,
swer questions only for the festivals got high marks from our panelists
they have attended within the past across the board, and near-perfect
five years. Participants were barred scores for the quality of the audi-
from voting for festivals they run or ence and the atmosphere at screen-
96
137 The Worlds 50 Best Genre Fests_DONE.indd 16 9/30/20 9:49 AM

ings and events. “Several people for COVID-19 innovation. This filmmaker who attended, while line hangouts. The festival also
actually cried in the audience year, it joined four other festivals another’s favorite memory was prides itself on excellent swag.
at the end of my film,” one film- on this list—Overlook, Brooklyn “drinking beer out of a statue’s
maker recalled. “My film is a hor- Horror, North Bend and Popcorn penis dressed a vampire in the Chattanooga Film
ror film. It’s heartfelt, but it was Frights—to launch Nightstream, middle of the city.” Another Festival
the first time I noticed people an online festival from October described the “most fun, awe- Chattanooga, Tennessee / 2021 /
literally weep at my ending. They 8-11 that combined the curation some crowd I ever met.” There’s chattfilmfest.org
were that into it. That’s a good and flavor of each festival. prestige, too: This year’s guest of Another high-scoring festival
audience.” The fest, based out of honor was Costa-Gavras. that our panel highlighted for
the Cineworld Leicester Square Brooklyn Horror Film Fest the quality of the audience and
and The Prince Charles Cinema, Brooklyn, N.Y./ Oct. 8-11 / brooklynhor- Bucheon International Fantastic curation—and also for festival-
went digital in August for its rorfest.com Film Festival specific events, plus atmosphere.
traditional summer event. This one got its highest marks for Bucheon, South Korea / 2021 / bifan. Something that also came up a
filmmaker social engagement, the kr/eng/ lot? Whiskey and biscuits. “Film-
Beyond Fest welcoming festival team, and the Our panel found Bucheon per- maker field trips are really fun at
Los Angeles / 2021 / beyondfest.com diversity of the filmmakers and fect in terms of the quality of the Chattanooga. Imagine drinking
Another fest that scores very films. It’s also very well-attended audience, curation and presenta- sponsor Chattanooga Whiskey
highly in the quality of its audi- by the press. One attendee’s tion, as well as atmosphere and while on a school bus full of
ence and atmosphere—though it fondest memory was “chatting all forms of diversity. The “amaz- weirdos to fun destinations, and
scored highest in presentation. with the programmers before ing theatrical presentation” then being treated to fried chick-
Case in point: It helped fans and after the screenings. Their and “polite, engaged, packed en biscuit sandwiches, all with
through quarantine this summer knowledge and passion is so pal- audiences” earned special praise. 20 to 30 old and new friends,”
with a drive-in pairing of The pable.” Another shared a favorite This summer, the festival carried said one attendee. Another
Terminator and Robocop. Based memory of “walking through on through COVID-19 with a filmmaker fondly remembered a
out of the beloved Hollywood Brooklyn, trying to combination of virtual screen- trip to local caves, and another
Egyptian Theater, it mixes “clas- ings, in-person screenings that highlighted an “amazing party
sic cinema and new gems,” one were held to about one-third on an old gambling boat.” Don’t
attendee notes. “While atten- capacity, and a VR/XR program, forget the lovingly, joyously
dance includes many of the same Beyond Reality, which allowed curated movies: “It really is the
folks as other LA-based genre participants to take part in the best curated fantastic fest of the
feats, this one is where everyone experiences without a headset. South,” one attendee said. The
is more relaxed and engaged The 24th edition was heavy on online fest in May included Ice-T
outside of their own projects,” sci-fi and dystopian disaster and Ernest Dickerson revisiting
says another. Among attend- genres and an emphasis on the their cult classic Surviving the
ees’ greatest memories were work of female directors. Game, Joe Bob Briggs talking
seeing 2001: a Space Odyssey with The Stand producer Mick
in 70 mm, a 4K restoration of BROOKLYN HORROR FILM FESTIVAL Calgary Underground Film Garris, Alex Winter discussing
Hellraiser, and top-notch guests Festival his documentary Zappa, and Joe
who have included Jackie Chan, Calgary / April 2021 / calgaryunder- Dante accepting the Lifetime
Arnold Schwarzenegger and find one of the theater spaces groundfilm.org Achievement Award.
Bong Joon-ho. and knowing immediately I was The festival team earned very
going in the right direction when high marks, with one filmmaker Cinepocalypse
Boston Underground I stumbled across a few folks praising “hands-down the best Chicago / 2021 / cinepocalypsefesti-
Boston / 2021 / bostonunderground.org dressed up as evil nuns.” Another PR team of any festival we’ve val.com
Again, atmosphere. One filmmak- attendee notes that you’ll “see been to. They set up tons of The festival gets praise for its
er said a favorite memory was lots of different types of horror: radio and print interviews for stress-free atmosphere and irrev-
“getting to walk around Harvard cosmic, comedy, satanic, slashers, us, in both official languages. erent audacity, but Chicago itself
with my castmate and direc- and the simply weird.” This is so crucial for small gets the highest marks. One
tor. BUFF is right in the heart films!” In normal years, the filmmaker notes that founder
of Boston, so walking is easy Brussels International Fantastic festival includes DJ sets before Josh Goldbloom “puts on a hell
to do and highly encouraged!” Film Festival films, custom arcade cabinets of a show, and his connections
CREDIT TK SHUTTERSTOCK/MOVIEMAKER
We concur on guests’ praise for Brussels / Sept. 2021 / briff.be/en/ ready to play for free, and other to genre heavyweights like C.
Cambridge’s Brattle Theatre, This festival scored very high extras to make the festival feel Robert Cargill, Ernest Dickerson,
which one attendee describes as overall, with the quality of the special—including trips to local and Scott Derrickson mean that
having “a super-fun clubhouse presentation and the host city it- record stores and the gorgeous as a filmmaker, you may end up
vibe while also being an excel- self earning especially high marks mountains of Banff. It even at a gathering with these impres-
lent theatre.” Another attendee from our panelists. “The festival schedules baby-friendly horror sive creatives.” It also gets praise
noted, “One of my best and most presents a really interesting expe- films. In response to COVID-19, for programming great indies
comfortable stays when it came rience, but the setting of the fes- CUFF offered drive-in screen- you may not see anywhere else.
to film festivals was here.” Boston tival, the city of Brussels itself, is ings, filmmaker Instagram take- The festival sadly had to cancel
Underground also deserves credit the best thing about it,” said one overs, at-home contests, and on- this year, but will return. Mean-

Meet Our Panel NICOLE MCCONTRO-
VERSY is director of
programming at the while, as it says on its website,
1BR producer Alok Mishra assembled these panelists to vote on the 50 Best Boston Underground it will “continue to screen
Film Festival and submissions from the filmmak-
Genre Fests in the world, based on their extensive festival experience. They
shorts programmer at Beyond Fest. ers who are the lifeblood of our
did not vote on their own festivals. industry.”
JOSHUA MILLICAN is a
RAKEFET ABERGEL is Tribeca (The Last Out) & Hot Docs lifelong horror fan who Etheria Film Festival
an American-Israeli (Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly began blogging about Los Angeles / 2021 / etheriafilmnight.
moviemaker whose Glenn-Copeland Story) as well films and television in com
breakout short “Boo”— as La Dosis and Sanzaru, both of 2009. A contributor at Named for She-Ra’s home
which she wrote, which screened at Fantasia. Dread Central since 2015, Millican planet, this female-focused
produced, directed and starred was appointed managing editor in event is “very women-support-
in—won several Best Director DAVID GREGORY heads 2018 and editor in chief in 2019. The ing-women,” says one attendee,
awards on the festival circuit. Her Severin Films, best talk show Chronic Horror marks his and earned similar praise from
first horror/thriller short, “Jax in known for producing first foray into producing original fellow filmmakers. Their best
Love,” earned her 10 Best Actress Special Edition blu-rays streaming content, for Dread Central memories include a hearse
awards. She works as an acting of genre films from the with Epic Pictures. parked out front of the Egyp-
coach/mentor at Kid (F)Actor, a 1960s-80s. He produced and direct- tian Theatre, the filmmakers’
company she founded in 2010. ed the documentary features Lost ALOK MISHRA worked in dinners, and a great speech by
“Boo” is the second production Soul: The Doomed Journey of Rich- film market research Roger Corman. “They are an
from Cyclamen Films. ard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau for 18 years in film excellently curated and com-
and Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & and trailer testing, as munal film festival that really
HEATHER BUCKLEY is Ghastly Death of Al Adamson, He well as in recruitment, makes you feel part of some-
a producer whose also directed and co-wrote Plague analysis, focus-group moderation, thing,” said one attendee. Ethe-
feature films include Town and produced and co-directed and client services. His first film 1BR, ria scores quite highly in the
The Ranger, Blood & The Theatre Bizarre. won several awards and premiered diversity of the programming
Flesh: The Reel Life at the Fantasia Film Festival in 2019, team, filmmakers, audience,
& Ghastly Death of Al Adamson, STACY PIPPI HAMMON is then became a No. 1 film on Netflix’s and representation on-screen,
and more than 100 documentary the co-founder and fes- Top 10. His next film project, Emer- and it all pays off with a very
special features. She now works tival director of Etheria gent, begins shooting in 2021. well-regarded presentation
under the new banner Black Film Night. She also overall. The festival team also
Mansion, which has several proj- runs Reels of the Dead, PETER PHOK is an gets serious praise. Though this
ects in development and is devoted the film festival that tours with the award-winning film year’s event couldn’t happen,
to auteurs who span the spectrum Days of the Dead horror convention producer with over several Etheria films did air on
of genre film. in multiple cities across the United 15 years of experience Shudder.
States as well as programs Mondo whose credits include
JUSTIN COOK has led Cult Variety Film Showcase and the acclaimed Ti West films In a Val- Fantasia Film Festival
publicity campaigns Slaughter Movie House. Hammon ley of Violence, The Sacrament, and Montreal / August 2021 / fantasiafes-
for over 750 inde- recently produced Etheria with The House of the Devil. Phok served tival.com/en/
pendent films. Titles festival partner Heidi Honeycutt. as executive producer on Ana Asen- “I’ve been going for eight
include the 15th anni- The Amazon Prime show features sio’s Most Beautiful Island, winner years now, and have too many
versary re-release of Richard Kelly’s selected shorts from Etheria Film of the 2017 SXSW Grand Jury Prize, memories to list. It’s like
Donnie Darko, genre fare such as Night. David Marmor’s 1BR, and Graham my film-kid summer camp
The Black String starring Frankie Reznick’s Deadwax for Shudder. every year, and I’ve had two
Muniz, The ToyBox starring De- “A STRANGE MAN IN A features in official selection.
nise Richards, and indie dramas FILM LAND,” JAY KAY is MIGUEL RODRIGUEZ It’s my favourite festival in the
such as Whiskey Galore starring a radio host, producer, is the founder and world,” said one filmmaker.
Eddie Izzard and Live Cargo star- journalist, moderator, executive director of Fantasia captured among the
ring LaKeith Stanfield. film festival program- the Horrible Imagin- highest overall marks, and
mer, and more who has collected ings. He is also a film has earned its reputation as
BRYAN GLICK describes over 1,800 conversations on Horror curator and programmer for San one of the premiere genre fes-
himself as just your Happens Radio. He is a staff writer Diego Latino Film Festival, The Film tivals in the world with a wide
typical genderqueer for HorrorHound Magazine and Geeks San Diego, and Digital Gym array of premieres, guests like
gay agnostic Jew who has worked on festivals like the Cinema. By day, he helps support and Guillermo del Toro, and audi-
works in film sales Philadelphia Unnamed Film Fest, train instructors for the Educational ences described with words
PHOTO CREDIT
and festival distribution. Their Horrible Imaginings Film Fest, Technology Services Department of like “rabid” and “insane.” Said
current films include award win- HorrorHound, FilmQuest, Macabro, UC San Diego. another filmmaker: “Fantasia
ners from Rotterdam (Drama Girl), and Etheria Film Night. opened the door to a wider

GENRE FESTIVAL 2021
audience for us. They are a heart race,” one attendee said. team—and very high marks to the
filmmakers’ dream come true. The barbecue is incredible, too, host city and the overall diversity
A masterfully run festival that though a little different from of the event. The festival high- come in and give a lecture about
can change the trajectory of Fantaspoa’s. It’s all organized lights horror directed, written, Giallo Horror and then coupled
one’s career.” This year’s online by Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, and/or produced by women and that with new and older films in
festival did an admirable job which one attendee calls “the non-binary people, and includes that genre,” one attendee noted.
of using timed, well-curated best movie theater in the coun- talks on subjects like “Martyrs in “It was amazing and I will never
screenings to capture the try.” It replaced its in-person Horror,“ “Made-for-TV Horror,“ look at Giallo films in the same
mystery and excitement of a event with a carefully curated and “The Bad Mother in Mexican way.”
live event. Its imaginatively slate of online screenings this Horror.“ One attendee praised the
programmed offerings included year, but vowed to return. As it welcoming environment: “The GenreBlast Film Festival
The Columnist, which drew said on its website, “The interac- opening party felt more like a Winchester, Virginia / Sept. 2021 /
lots of buzz, the delightfully tions that happen between, be- gath- genreblast.com
curious Climate of the Hunter, fore and after films, interactions The audience and atmosphere
and the charming Hail to the that make the festival ‘Fantastic,’ got near-perfect scores at this
Deadites, a documentary about simply cannot be recreated fest, based out of Winchester’s
Evil Dead fans. through Zoom.” Alamo Drafthouse, that skillfully
programs features alongside
Fantaspoa FilmQuest eclectic shorts. Most people
Porto Alegre, Brazil / May 2021 / Provo, Utah / April 2021 / filmquest- stay at a hotel across the street,
fantaspoa.com fest.com which adds to what more than
This 18-day festival notes that If you’ve heard Utah doesn’t one attendee calls a “summer
75% of its programming is made party, bear witness: FilmQuest camp” feel. (The fest also aims to
up of Latin American premieres. is celebrated not just for par- add a second hotel.) The organiz-
Bring an appetite for barbecue, ties, but afterparties. “The ers pride themselves on know-
great films and more. “The orga- karaoke party they have at ing filmmakers by name and
nizers own their own geek bar the amazing [name deleted working with true independents
and throw parties (karaoke and to protect the innocent] is to help them find distribution.
otherwise) that are a lot of fun. not to be missed. One year, “GenreBlast curates the filmmak-
And caipirinhas are delicious the venue owner reopened ers as much as, if not more than,
FILMQUEST
and plentiful.” one filmmaker after the party ended and we the films,” one filmmaker said,
says. Another recalls convincing stayed there all night singing “and that leads to an atmosphere
Claudio Simonetti of the prog- and dancing and hanging out,” ering of friends in a coffeehouse. that is incredibly welcoming and
rock band Goblin “to play the one filmmaker recalled. The par- ... Very intimate.” Added another: supportive. Everyone at the fes-
score from Suspiria on a broken tying goes hand-in-hand with “I love that they take chances tival is just pumped to be there,
piano at a local bar.” It’s no earnest, actual human connec- with their programming,” while and everyone wants to see each
surprise this was another highly tion. “The programmers are so another praised the “really cool other succeed.”
rated festival in every category— wonderful and know everyone DIY punk rock vibe.” It’s “best
and more than one filmmaker by name,” one attendee said, of” curations have traveled far Gerdarmer International Fantasy
also noted the “beautiful people.” while another noted not just the and wide, including to Tel Aviv, Film Festival
Adding to the beauty: The festi- kindness of the organizers, but Stockholm, Philadelphia, Seattle, Gerdarmer, France / Winter 2021 /
val reports that more than 100 the sheer beauty of Provo. Just New York City, London, Glasgow, festival-gerardmer.com/
people around the world have its an hour from Park City, home Oslo and Valparaiso. “The town is beautiful and a
logo tattooed on their bodies. of Sundance and Slamdance, it’s bit of a winter wonderland at
more proof of Utah’s thriving Fractured Visions the time the festival runs,” one
Fantastic Fest film scene. The festival notes Cardiff / Dec. 5-6 / fracvis.co.uk filmmaker noted of this festival.
Austin / 2021 / fantasticfest.com that guests sometimes arrive This festival team got a perfect The Gerdarmer team earned a
This one gets fantastic ratings skeptical, but leave with hopes score from our panelists—prob- perfect score from attendees, one
across the board from our panel- of returning to shoot future ably because of things like this: of whom praised the “insane”
ists, and attendees gush about projects in town. One attendee’s favorite memory hospitality. “You were shuttled
gloriously receptive audiences, a was “being given a huge poster of everywhere in Mercedes, almost
“phenomenal” party circuit, and Final Girls Berlin the festival after I inquired as to every meal is taken care of in
top-notch guests. “Filmmakers Berlin / Feb. 4-7 2021 / finalgirlsberlin. whether or not these were avail- lavish fashion. The other part
like Edgar Wright will show up com able. (They weren’t).” Curation of that was amazing is that all the
without having a film in the fes- Perhaps the best-named fest of the festival, which aims to bring filmmakers would gather every
tival just because FF is so much all scored very highly with our the world’s best horror to Wales, night at this swanky hotel lobby
fun. … The quality of the films panelists, who gave a straight- also got extremely high marks. and drink and talk well into the
and events make a filmmaker’s up perfect score to the festival “They had a college professor night.”
137 The Worlds 50 Best Genre Fests_DONE.indd 99 10/1/20 1:37 PM

pecially when it came to content One filmmaker remembers “a established Monster Fest Austra-
Grimmfest creatives being BIPOC (Black French audience member telling lia, an event held over four days
Manchester, U.K. / Oct. 7-11 / grimmfest. Indigenous People Of Color) that me my film was ‘trash. But good in multiple cities simultaneously.
com I have seen so far.” trash.’” The festival team, mean- “It’s a full cross-continental the-
Curation and presentation get while, earned praise for being atrical tour,” one attendee said.
the highest marks at this truly Imagine Film Fest “so hospitable and very sweet.” “As such they pay better than
independent event. One attendee Amsterdam / April 2021 / imaginefilm- almost any other film festival and
praised the ultimate ice-breaker: festival.nl/en/ Macabro guarantee that a film is exposed
“Axe-throwing with other film- This festival gets its highest Mexico City / August 2021 / macabro.mx across Australia. It frequently
makers on our first day.” You have marks for the quality of the pre- Our panel found that the results in sales deals.”
plenty of time to sharpen up your sentation, and that begins with festival team, atmosphere and
skills for 2021. In the meantime, its website, which offers scintil- audience diversity were all sim- Morbido
Grimmfest responded to lock- lating and disturbing images ply perfect. The word “magic” Mexico City / Oct. 31-Nov. 6 / mor-
down by making available a slew from selected films right on the also came up repeatedly from bidofest.com
of past Grimmfest shorts and homepage. The EYE Filmmu- moviemakers, and Mexico City Not just a film festival, Mor-
features on a new online platform seum, bido also focuses on celebrating
called Grimmfest TV. film through academia, radio, TV,
books, magazines, production
Grossman Fantastic Film and Wine and more. It’s also known for
Festival unforgettable memories: “I have
Ljutomer, Slovenia / July 2021/ grossmann.si/en/ a great time at each festival,” one
Our panel praised the top-notch attendee said, citing, for example,
festival team and flawless cura- a 50-person troupe performing
tion, programming, and filmmak- Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” in
er selection. “Great talks, great full zombie mode. Said another
locations, fantastic spirit of the moviemaker: “They bring us on
organizers,” in the words of one amazing adventures—trips to the
filmmaker. Also earning praise: pyramids and a massive Mexi-
The wine. The latest edition of the can lunch in an underground
fest praised The Lodge by Severin restaurant, boat rides—and put
Fiala and Veronika Franz as the MOTE X on incredible theatrical perfor-
best film and LeBlanc des Templi- mances and concerts by people
ers by Tourist Farm Hlebec as the like legendary genre composer
best wine. home of the festival, received itself earned special praise. One Simon Boswell, with clips from
high praise as a beautiful venue filmmaker embraced “Mexican films he’s scored playing in the
Horrible Imaginings for screenings. Amsterdam is witchcraft, black magic fairs, background.”
Santa Ana, California / 2021 / hifilmfest. filled with gorgeous, immersive cigars,” though your experience
com museums, as well as bikes and may be different. Another panel- New York City Horror Film Festival
This fest really embraced the fun. One filmmaker’s fondest ist raved about the enthusiastic, New York City / Dec. 3-6 / nychor-
horrible times this year, announc- memory? “Being offered a bike to deeply informed audiences. “It rorfest.com
ing on its website that it was ride after winning the audience basically helped kick off my No surprise here: The host city,
“made virtual by the plague.” It award and given a 12-year-old career as a short filmmaker at a atmosphere and the audiences
gets especially high marks for bottle of rum, and then crashing national level,” another attendee all received perfect scores from
atmosphere and overall diver- the bike, breaking the bottle and said. “They are always support- our panelists. “The questions
sity, and attendees singled out the award and still feeling on top ing and promoting the filmmak- from the festival programmers
programmer Miguel Rodriguez. of the world.” ers they believe in.” show great detail and are not
“He is the warmest host and the just the same old usual questions
most knowledgeable program- L’Etrange Melbourne Monster Fest that get asked everywhere. They
mer,” one moviemaker said. His Paris / September 2021 / etrangefes- Melbourne, Australia / Oct. 29-Nov. 1 / show they really know the project
passion for film is contagious. I tival.com monsterfest.com.au and the filmmaker,” said one at-
don’t think the guy slept the en- “What amazing meals, wine, The quality of curation and tendee. Filmmakers also praised
tire festival but he was always the and films! So well curated!” said presentation, and Melbourne the sense of family, which is so
most excited person in the room.” one attendee of this festival, itself, got very high marks. strong that one attendee reported
More than one moviemaker was which declared itself a “cinemat- “They threw some fun parties getting a ride to the airport from
delighted to see films they hadn’t ographic oasis” when it started including a very challenging a programmer. The festival is also
seen anywhere else. Said another: three decades ago and has never quiz night!” said one attendee. known for star-studded Lifetime
“Horrible Imaginings for 2020 backed down. Neither do the But the thrills don’t end in Achievement Awards. Recent
had the most diverse lineup, es- enthusiastic, exacting audiences. Melbourne. In 2019, the festival winners included The Walking
100

GENRE FESTIVAL 2021
Dead’s Greg Nicotero and the November, but had to cancel the took a Ghost Tour of the French
Candyman himself, Tony Todd. April event this year. Quarter in New Orleans,” another
filmmaker said. “It was a blast!” esting things about this festival is
Motel X The festival team, quality of the that it is both science fiction- and
Lisbon / September 2021 / motelx. Nightmares Film Festival presentation and audience, and, horror-based, so you really get
org/en Columbus, Ohio / Oct. 21-25 / night- of course, the Crescent City also the best of both worlds,” said one
Curation gets the highest maresfest.com scored highly. The midnight WTF filmmaker. The fest also gives out
marks at this festival, which Many festivals are trying to Shorts Block is known for raising a Defender of the Universe Award
celebrates the best of horror make their virtual versions stand the most experimental spirits in for people who create or inhabit
produced worldwide while also out, and Nightmares nailed it: Its genre cinema, and the fest also inspiring characters.
encouraging Portugese genre virtual event this year is named earned respect for its champion-
films. There’s a reason one at- “NFF: Masquerade,” and horrific ing of female filmmakers and Overlook Hotel Film Festival
tendee praised “the passion of all imagery abounds. That’s a testa- LGBT+ horror. New Orleans / Oct. 8-11 / overlookfilm-
the programmers and audience.” ment to the quality of presenta- fest.com
Motel X’s well-planned events tion here, which our panelists North Bend Film Festival Our second festival from what
have included an open-air screen- deemed to be very nearly flaw- North Bend, Washington / Oct. 8-11 / Overlook calls “America’s most
ing of The Rocky Horror Picture less. Like a good nightmare, the northbendfilmfest.com haunted city” does especially well
Show and an overnight writ- festival pays close attention to North Bend is the town out- in diversity and curation. It’s also
ing marathon inspired by Lord detail. Here’s one attendee’s recol- side Seattle where David Lynch very well-connected: Past guests
Byron and Mary Shelley. Talks lection of meeting co-founder Ja- shot Twin Peaks, but that’s far have included Roger Corman,
have featured Ari Aster, Ruggero son Tostevin for the first time: “I from the only claim to horror Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth,
Deodato, George A. Romero, walked into the bar at the theater fame for this very highly rated Taika Waititi, Ari Aster, Ana Lily
Dario Argento, and many more. where he’d set up a little work- festival. Screenings take place in Amirpour, Paul Scheer, Roxanne
Plus there’s wholesome stuff: It station. He instantly looked up an iconic 1940s-era Art Deco cin- Benjamin, Darren Lyn Bousman,
has a section entirely dedicated from the computer, saw me, and ema, and the festival embraces Simon Barrett and Jason Blum,
to kids, and offers a class on how greeted me; he knew my name, the future with XR and immer- and the board includes Elijah
to make baked goods in the shape my film, and where I was from, sive theater experiences that one Wood, Karyn Kusama, Leigh
of monsters. and made sure to introduce me attendee called “top-notch.” Don’t Whannell, Mick Garris, Larry
to a few other people that were worry, no one’s forgotten about Fessenden and Joe Dante.“ My fa-
Night Visions hanging out between screenings. old-time thrills. One attendee’s vorite thing about the Overlook FF
Helsinki / Nov. 25-29 / nightvisions. It set the tone for the festival, favorite memory was “eating is the familiar faces attending to
info/wp/en/ one of inclusion and community, home-made spaghetti around a support the genre and filmmakers,
The tagline on the festival’s along with really fantastic horror campfire with the whole festival while also promoting their latest
website captures the moment films.” crowd while the North Bend offerings,” one filmmaker said. “It’s
perfectly: “the new (ab) locals shared stories of their an immersive film festival so you
normal.” Speaking of supernatural encounters. This feel a part of the attending com-
perfection: The audience, wasn’t just a highlight of the fes- munity for the weekend, especially
quality of curation, atmo- tival—this was a highlight in life.” if you’re staying within the festival
sphere and festival team all hotel.”
won perfect scores from our Other Worlds
panel. Also, the sauna got Austin / Dec. 3-6 / otherworldsfilm- Panic Fest
several raves. One attendee NO A HORROR fest.com Kansas City, Missouri / 2021 / panicfilm-
listed these three favorite Austin itself and the whole fes- fest.com
memories: “One, the parties tival team get the highest marks What one attendee calls the
were insane and there was for this highly regarded festival, “most hospitable fest for emerg-
this papier mache shark floating NOLA Horror which is primarily focused on sci- ing filmmakers” goes out of its
around the crowd eating people. New Orleans / September 2021 / ence fiction, but includes a side- way to be inclusive in every way.
Number two, they put us up in nolahff.com bar called Under Worlds focused Established in 2013, it’s held at
a boat hotel on the water, which “The festival is tucked into on horror. Each year, artistic the historic Screenland Armour,
was so cool and unique. Number the sleepy Garden District, director Bears Rebecca Fonte a more than 100-year-old theater,
three, we did a traditional Finn- which is magical in itself,” said attends the world premiere of the which partners on the fest with
ish sauna (men and women were one attendee, who also stated 48-Hour SciFi Film Challenge at the website DownrightCreepy.
separate) and we kept on going in the obvious: “Most of the food Other Worlds’ sister festival, Sci-Fi com. Panic Fest is also known for
and out... some of us jumped in you’ll find in this city is excel- London, then flies home to give embracing podcasting, drawing
the freezing lake, and we ate lots lent.” And the ghosts are also of the films their North American beloved shows like Last Podcast
of sausages, and beer was had by very high quality. “The festival premiere the next day. “Bears and on the Left, The Movie Crypt with
all.” Night Visions typically occurs coordinators planned an out- her staff are amazing and so very Adam Green and Joe Lynch, The
twice each year, in April and ing for moviemaker where we sweet, but one of the most inter- Cult Podcast and many more. “It’s
101

a giant celebration” with a “very Nightmare on Elm Street star exalting in the presence of living been to this gorgeous coastal town
good atmosphere” says another Heather Langenkamp. Hollywood history, you can also southwest of Barcelona brought
attendee. enjoy the costumed characters back a treasured memory, ranging
Salem Horror Film Festival who pose for tourists out front. from “a swim at 5 a.m. after singing
Popcorn Frights Salem, Massachusetts / Oct. 1-13 / salem- “My favorite memory is having karaoke until the bar closed” to
Fort Lauderdale, Florida / Oct. 8-11 / horror.com bald Superman and fat Super- “the zombie walk” to “the best beer
popcornfrights.com The home of the wittily provoca- man fight each other outside the in the world.”
This seven-day fest is held at tive Satanic Temple, seen in the theater,” says one filmmaker.
the state-of-the-art Savor Cinema, excellent recent documentary Slamdance
a historical landmark originally Hail Satan?, is also the home of a Shriekfest Park City, Utah / Jan. 22-28, 2021 /
built as a Methodist Church that festival that plays skillfully on its Los Angeles / April 15-18, 2021 / slamdance.com
retains its church ceiling, lamps, local history. “In 2018 they had a shriekfest.com The festival that helped launch
and stained glass windows, mak- program called The Weekend of Festival founder and director everyone from the Russo Broth-
ing for a truly gothic atmosphere. the Witch which explores feminist Denise Gossett relocated to Los ers and Christopher Nolan is
Filmmakers stay at a boutique themes in Angeles from Orlando, very focused on building lasting
hotel just 15 minutes and the festival maintains relationships. Held simultaneously
from the beach, and a presence in both cities, with Sundance, it attracts a dedi-
enjoy premieres of making it a bicoastal rar- cated group who quickly become
up to 25 feature films ity. “Denise is a dynamo a close-knit community at the site
and 50 short films. and she won’t stop. Her of the fest, the Treasure Moun-
It celebrates local energy is great,” one tain Inn. “Right from the get-go,
filmmakers with its filmmaker said. She Slamdance has a constant line up
“Homegrown: 100% makes a special effort of social events (meet and greets,
Pure Fresh Squeezed to look after filmmak- panels, happy hours, bowling night)
Florida Horror” pro- ers, promoting their that encourages the filmmakers to
gram. One filmmaker’s work and sending engage with one another, attend
highlight? “Taking a them referrals (and each other’s screenings and social-
beach trip with filmmak- SCREAMFEST movie tickets) for ize,” one filmmaker noted. Another
ers and programmers.” years. “Everything” attendee pointed out that that free,
Another praised hosts horror,” one attendee about this festival is fun, another practical advice abounds: “David
who “really go out of their way to noted. Several attendees noted that filmmaker said, while a differ- Albert Pierce from Pierce Law
make you feel welcomed. They in- “October in Salem is probably one ent attendee highlights the extra Group does fireside chats where he
troduce you to other filmmakers of the best physical settings for creativity that goes into it: “They gives free advice to filmmakers. We
and press people attending and a horror festival.” There are few programmed a horror-tinged chose him as our lawyer because
help facilitate conversations and places on earth better than New music video that a lot of festivals of these chats.” Slamdance also
discussions to allow networking England in the fall, even if every- likely wouldn’t have and the song recently started a YouTube channel
to happen.” thing feels haunted. Hell, especially was good enough that I immedi- that premieres a new short film
because everything feels haunted. ately bought it after the festival.” every Sunday.
Portland Horror Film Festival It went virtual this year, but start The opening-night party earned
Portland, Oregon / June 2021 / port- your planning for 2021: Massachu- particular praise. South African HorrorFest
landhorrorfilmfestival.com setts is, at the time of this writing, Cape Town, South Africa / Oct. 28 - Nov.
“My favorite thing is the doing better than most states in SITGES Festival Internacional 13 / horrorfest.info
destination. It’s a really cool keeping COVID-19 under control. Sitges, Spain / Oct. 8-18 / sitgesfilm- Billing itself as “the only horror-
venue in an even cooler town,” festival.com/eng dedicated annual event on the
said one filmmaker, sharing a Screamfest “Everyone that loves genre cin- continent,” this festival started in
popular opinion: the host city Los Angeles / Oct. 6-15 / screamfest.com ema has to visit Sitges sometime,” 2005 in the hopes of boosting and
got high marks from our panel. Attending a festival at Hol- said one filmmaker, which may nurturing local horror movies.
“The staff were really friendly and lywood’s iconic Chinese Theater, explain the vast, rapt audiences. It’s gotten high marks since. “My
really happy I could make it. The right in the heart of everything, Another filmmaker recalls “be- favorite aspect is the location,” one
screening and Q&A were well-at- is one of the biggest draws of ing in the most massive cinema attendee said. “It was my first trip
tended, so you can tell they have this long-running, fan-friendly audience I’ve ever seen. There to South Africa and I truly enjoyed
a strong community of fans,” said fest, which gives the red-carpet were thousands of people and it. Capetown is beautiful and the
another filmmaker. Organizers treatment to films you may not they were all so passionate about movie theatre was lovely.” Yash
Gwen and Brian Callahan are also see elsewhere. The advisory board genre films.” This festival scores Patnaik, whose Hindi horror film
the directors of the H. P. Lovecraft includes horror legends John Car- very highly in just about every Kaalo won Best Film and Best
Film Festival, a Portland institu- penter and Clive Barker, and past category, but the host city and Cinematography in 2010, praised
tion for more than two decades. guests have included Sean Penn, quality of curation are especially the “very organic” setting and the
And past judges have included James Franco and Slash. While well-regarded. Everyone who has mix of classics and experimental
102

GENRE FESTIVAL 2021
content, saying he will “treasure” prayers. Austin, as we’ve mentioned Vertigo Entertainment in which
his festival memories. “The fest has before, is an incredible film town, short films submitted to the fest
always been open and embrac- and SXSW always rises to the chal- are also eligible for review by the
ing of my work, which often isn’t lenge of living up to pre-festival company. date. The festival plans a big
standard horror fare,” added Chris buzz: “They know how to put on 15th annual edition, including
Alexander, director of Blood Apoc- a show,” one filmmaker noted. Ob- Toronto International Film nine nights of horror, sci-fi
alypse and the new Necropolis: Le- served another: “SXSW is the most Festival Midnight and action. It gets its highest
gion. “They take chances and risks functionally egalitarian premiere Toronto, Ontario / September 2021 / tiff. marks for atmosphere, and
and it’s always been an honor to be fest. Industry and filmmakers are net high praise from one attendee
part of it.” Festival organizers Paul on an even playing field, which This very highly rated fes- for “the people who run
Blom and Sonja Ruppersberg, and makes it much easier to network.” tival is part of TIFF, an Oscar the fest. They’re very sweet
their entire team, earned praise for We can’t wait for the symbolism— showcase that is one of the most people who kill themselves
their warmth and positivity. and reality—of SXSW returning as respected festivals in the world. to organize the whole thing.”
an in-person event. Another attendee praises
Sundance Midnight “the passion of the
Park City, Utah / Jan. 28-Feb. 3 / Telluride Horror Show programmers.” It gets
sundance.org Telluride, Colorado / Oct. 15-18, 2020 / its highest scores in the
It can be hard to find the telluridehorrorshow.com quality of its presenta-
words to express how important Our panelists gave Telluride tion, the diversity of its
Sundance is, but this filmmaker some of the highest marks audiences, and its atmo-
did a pretty good job: “Obviously of any festival, and said the sphere.
Sundance is the mack daddy.” atmosphere couldn’t be better.
A revered, serious-minded fest It’s no surprise that a loyal Women in Horror Film
by day turns to diabolical fun audience returns year after Festival
after midnight, when bundled-up year. “The sense of commu- Atlanta / June 10-12, 2021 /
crowds huddle hot chocolates in nity is really strong. Really WOMEN IN HORROR FILM FESTIVAL wihff.com
hopes of seeing the next big, crazy feels like a true indepen- The festival takes care
thing. Some of them get lucky: “It dent film celebration, whilst most But for all the prestige, the Mid- to celebrate not just brilliant
can be quite hard for members of festivals feel much more corporate,” night screenings are a party— female directors, but also
the public to get into most films said one attendee. Another raved: and several attendees praised outstanding female cin-
at Sundance,” one attendee says. “We got to play an opera house!” festival organizer/curator Peter ematographers, composers,
“However, the Midnight screenings Added another: “The town itself is Kuplowsky for never letting the editors, writers, production
are a different story. Oftentimes amazing. It’s a beautiful place and audience down. “Every Midnight designers, special makeup
people will just give tickets away it feels like Halloween with the Madness screening is like a rock effects artists and more.
and/or the entire waitlist will get crisp air and the leaves chang- concert where the act happens “The variety and diversity
in. It gives the filmmaker a more ing color.” When the festival went to be the craziest genre film of filmmakers at WIHFF is
hungry audience.” Our Peter can find,” one attendee unmatched at any other fes-
panel found Sundance said. Besides drawing the tival I had attended,” one at-
exemplary in many areas, biggest names in Holly- tendee said. Another praised
including the quality of the wood, TIFF is a magnet for the camaraderie, which
audience, curation, presen- distributors. One movie- continues well after the
tation, host city, engage- maker had an easy time set- festival ends: “I think the
ment, publicity, distributors tling on a festival highlight: best part is the community
in attendance, atmosphere, “Selling our movie!” This it has created. It’s a great
and diversity. year’s TIFF met the moment time being there and meet-
with a mix of physical, ing folks, but they do a good
SXSW Midnight drive-in and digital screen- job of creating spaces for
Austin / March 2021 / sxsw.com ings, as well as virtual red filmmakers to connect even
For many moviemakers carpets, press conferences, after the festival. Private so-
TELLURIDE HORROR FESTIVAL
and fans, the cancellation and industry talks. cial media groups and such
of this beloved festival in allow continued contact and
early March was the first sign that online this year, you could almost Toronto After Dark support.” And a filmmaker
COVID-19 wouldn’t just disappear. taste the mountain air just by look- Toronto, Ontario / Oct. 14-22, 2021 / who took home one of the
It was the first of many major dis- ing at the pictures on its website. torontoafterdark.com festival’s handcrafted Lizzie
ruptions to the normal way of do- Perhaps best of all for filmmakers, Lots of postponed festivals Awards highlighted one of
ing business. SXSW draws praise the Telluride Horror Show has an plan returns sometime in 2021, the most important factors
across the board, and is often the unique partnership with It and but Toronto After Dark opti- of any festival: “Intelligent
answer to filmmakers’ distribution The Departed production company mistically went ahead and set a audience questions.” MM
103

FILM
ABROAD
AND
SAVE
Nine of the world’s
most attractive
production incentives
B Y E M I LY B U D E R
OOKING TO tion costs, and other services. or European crew. fully funded, your production
L
cut costs on pro- Tax incentives are similar to Finally—and most impor- company must be registered in
duction? Though rebates, but are based on tax tantly—you should carefully Fiji, and you must demonstrate
it may seem returns—production companies research the latest COVID-19 the ability to release and dis-
counterintuitive, receive a refund for taxes owed news in your country of choice. tribute your project in at least
you should consider shooting on qualifying local expendi- Different countries, under- one significant international
abroad. tures. (Other incentives, such as standably, have different proto- market. There is no minimum
In an effort to stimulate national and regional film funds, cols in place. Whether or not percentage of filming that
their economies, develop local grants, and tax shelters, tend to the country you hope to shoot needs to take place in Fiji, but
skills and infrastructure, and be more exclusive, and thus are in has issued specific regula- the production must engage the
promote national branding, not included in this article.) tions related to the pandemic, services of Fiji citizens, includ-
many countries offer generous When evaluating production you should do your due dili- ing film students from Fiji
government aid to foreign film incentives, there are a few im- gence. Taking your production National University. Documen-
and television productions. portant things to consider. Most abroad may put crew members taries are not eligible for the tax
These production incentives are countries require a percentage and the local population at risk rebate. The funding cap is high;
the bedrock of many film and of production to take place of contracting the virus. up to $13 million USD can be
television financing plans; more within their borders. Many Below, we’ve compiled nine awarded per qualifying project.
than half of American movies stipulate that productions must of the world’s most attractive
are filmed partially abroad, and
about a third are shot entirely
outside of the United States.
meet a minimum amount of
qualifying local expenditure.
Some countries require projects
production incentives in terms
of cash rebates and tax incen-
tives. Although this is by no
2 SINGAPORE
The Singapore Tourism
Board’s cash rebate program is
Production incentives can to pass a “cultural eligibility means an exhaustive list, it’s a quite generous, but its qualifica-
vary significantly in structure, test”; to be eligible for a 30% great place to start. tions are a bit restrictive. The
scope, and eligibility criteria. Italian tax credit, for example, “Film in Singapore” scheme
The most common are cash
rebates and tax incentives. Cash
rebates function like grants:
you must demonstrate that
your script features a combi-
nation of Italian or European
1 FIJI
According to Film Fiji, the
country offers a 47% tax rebate
subsidizes up to 40% of local
expenses incurred by foreign
producers in Singapore, includ-
They are paid out to production content (such as main char- for productions that spend ing hiring local crew, post-
companies in percentages based acters and settings), and that more than $115,000 USD lo- production services, production
on qualifying local expendi- your production will employ a cally. To qualify for the rebate, equipment rental, airfare, and
tures, including labor, produc- significant percentage of Italian your project must already be accommodation. To be eligible,
136_Tax Incentives_DONE.indd 70 9/30/20 11:08 AM

MOST WANTED , A THRILLER STARRING
JOSH HARTNETT, RECEIVED CANADIAN
TAX INCENTIVES.
ROMANIA IS KNOWN FOR CINEMATIC

LOCALES AND SOME OF EUROPE’S MOST
INVITING INCENTIVES.
You must apply for the rebate

through a production company
that has operated consistently
in the Netherlands, EU, EEA,
or Switzerland for the last two
years. Furthermore, the compa-
ny must have produced at least
you film in Medellín specifically, film’s total budget, or $79 mil- one film in the last seven years
you may be eligible for an addi- lion USD, whichever is lower. that was released theatrically in
tional rebate of up to 15%. The There is a minimum in-country the Netherlands. Your produc-
minimum spend is $600,000 spend of $141,000 USD, with a tion does not have to film in the
USD. You must work with a minimum total budget require- Netherlands to be eligible, and
production company that is at ment of at least $282,000. a maximum of $1.7 million USD
least 20% Colombian-owned, Applicants must also pass a can be awarded per project.
and two department heads as cultural eligibility test.
however, you must portray

well as one principal actor must
be Colombian.
6 AUSTR ALIA
Australia offers a host of
8 ROMANIA
Romania has long attracted
foreign productions to its
Singapore in a positive light.
Other submission requirements
include an estimated budget of
4 CANADA
The Candian federal
government offers a base tax
national and regional tax re-
bates to qualifying local produc-
tions (which can be combined,
dramatic locales, but the recent
introduction of a 35% tax rebate
has sweetened the deal consid-
production costs to be incurred credit for resident labor of up in some cases, to maximize erably, rendering the program
in Singapore, a track record of to 16%, in addition to tax cred- value). The best is the Producer among Europe’s most generous
the directors, producers, and its, rebates, and grants issued Offset Tax Credit, a 40% tax film incentives. To qualify, 20%
actors attached to the project, individually by the provinces. rebate for features that spend at (but not less than $113,000
and your financing, market- British Columbia, for example, least $357,000 USD on produc- USD) of your production bud-
ing, and distribution plan. The offers an extra 35% tax rebate; tion in Australia. To qualify, get must be spent in Romania.
incentive is only available to Alberta, a 30% cash grant; New- your film must pass a cultural While you are not explicitly
feature films with a runtime of foundland and Labrador, a 40% eligibility test that screens for required to film there, a 10%
LEFT: COURTESY OF SHUTTERSTOCK; RIGHT: COURTESY OF SABAN FILMS
more than 70 minutes, and the tax credit. The nine Canadian “significant Australian content,” uplift is applied to the rebate if
final grant amount is discre- provinces that offer additional and you must already have a your project explicitly promotes
tionary and is determined on a production incentives each contract for theatrical release. Romania or Romanian loca-
case-by-case basis. have their own requirements The Post, Digital & Visual tions. The per-project funding
for eligibility. Effects (PDV) Offset, mean- cap is $11.3 million USD.
3 COLOMBIA
Colombia’s two-tier cash
rebate system provides up to 5 IREL AND
According to Screen
while, offers a 30% rebate on
post-production expenditure in
the country, regardless of where 9 MAURITIUS
Mauritius, an island which
40% for film services (including Ireland, the country’s film com- your production was shot. is known for its stunning
services related to post-pro- mission, productions that shoot beaches, lagoons, and reefs,
duction, artistic, and technical
services), and another 20% for
logistical services (including
at least 10% of days on location
in Ireland can be eligible for up
to a 35% tax credit. This can be
7 THE NETHERL ANDS
The Netherlands offers a
cash rebate of up to 35% of local
offers a cash rebate of 30%
to 40%, depending on local
expenditure. The minimum
services provided for trans- combined with a 5% regional expenditures on film produc- qualifying expenditure for the
port, accommodation, and uplift provided for projects that tions, with a minimum spend of 30% rebate is $100,000 USD;
food). Your production must are produced outside Dublin $112,000 USD. To qualify, your for the 40% rebate, it is $1
be partially or totally filmed and Cork city and county. The production’s minimum budget million USD. Productions must
in Colombia, with a minimum incentive’s cap is notably high: must exceed $1.1 million USD promote Mauritius at the time
$600,000 USD local spend. If it can be applied to 80% of the ($280,000 for documentaries). of the film’s release. MM
136_Tax Incentives_DONE.indd 71 9/30/20 11:08 AM

PRESENTED BY
THE
WORLD’S
h
BEST
c
FILM
e a
SCHOOLS
y B t he
Y
L LO
MO
B
TIM
l. BY
a t owe
in g
o n . Br
cat i
edu
as 3D Animation and VFX; four-week
h f i l m online workshops for adults, and three-
notc
and four-week online camps for kids.
p-
t a to
Students can also transfer credits to con-
Ge
tinue classes at any of NYFA’s American
campuses.
The school emphasizes well-rounded-
All of the following schools are ness and versatility: An advanced diploma
combining online learning with efforts filmmaking student can expect to work
to bring students back for in-person as a producer, cinematographer, gaffer,
instruction when it’s possible to do so sound person, camera operator, editor, and
under strict safety protocols. The situa- screenwriter, and even some acting. They
tion with COVID-19 is changing daily, so will also have the opportunity to make
please check these programs’ websites or their own films.
M
contact the schools directly. As its name suggests, the Gold Coast
AYBE YOU’RE We’ll do an American list of the Best (where Margot Robbie grew up) of-
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF AFTRS, NYFA AUSTRALIA AND VFS

THINKING ABOUT Film Schools by the Beach soon. In the fers the gold standard of beaches and
FILM SCHOOL. And meantime, enjoy applying for one of broadwaters. The popular Main Beach,
maybe, like us, you these schools—or daydreaming about it. which connects to Surfers Paradise and
spend a preposterous Broadbeach, is a short stroll from cam-
amount of time fantasizing about all the places AUSTRALIA pus. And it’s a short drive to rainforests
you’re going to travel as soon as you can. and hinterlands.
Why not go to a film school by the beach, New York Film Academy Australia
where you can read scripts while listening NYFA Australia, based on the Gold Australian Film Television & Radio School
to the waves lap against the shore? Or draw Coast on a backlot for Village Roadshow From the world-famous Bondi Beach
storyboards as you stare at the horizon? Studios, focuses on teaching American- to tranquil swimming spots in and
We had two big rules for this list of the style filmmaking. Students get hands-on around Sydney Harbor, you’ll have
World’s Best Film Schools by the Beach: The training to walk onto Hollywood produc- boundless opportunities for swimming,
schools had to be great, and they needed at tions anywhere in the world. It offers an surfing or coastal walks as you plot your
least one lovely beach within a 30-minute advanced diploma of Screen and Media cinematic breakthrough.
drive. Some of them were even closer—or in filmmaking, acting and screenwriting; Everything you need will be at your
had even more beaches. a diploma in the same subjects, as well disposal at AFTRS, a global center for
137_Film Schools on the Beach_DONE_alt.indd 42 9/30/20 12:32 PM

screen and broadcast storytelling that offers More incentives: Kevin Smith, VFS’s
a Masters of Arts Screen in animation, cine- creative ambassador for 2020, has
matography, directing, documentary, editing, hosted an online talk for students and
music, producing, production design, screen- has more initiatives in the works. VFS
writing and sound. There’s also a Graduate also just announced a new accelerated
Diploma in radio and a Bachelor of Arts program with MetFilm School, allowing
Screen: Production, as well as short courses, students to obtain a master’s degree in
industry certificates and online courses. as few as two years. And VFS has one of
You’ll also get some of the best opportuni- the most popular film school YouTube SCRIPT CONFERENCE ON THE SHORE
ties possible for hands-on experience, since channels in the world.
Australia has had some of the greatest success path. A visit to the Seawall will give you
in containing COVID-19 and was one of the Simon Fraser University 28 km—that’s more than 17 miles, Ameri-
first countries to return to full production. The film program in the School of cans—to pre-viz your film in your mind.
Contemporary Arts at SFU’s Vancouver
CANADA campus aims for an art-school feel. The NEW ZEALAND
film program is cohort-based, meaning
Vancouver Film School students work with a group of peers, pro- Auckland University of Technology
Vancouver has famously lured countless gressing together, and working with other AUT’s Screen Production Major, part
productions from Hollywood—and relocated SCA students focused on areas including of the Bachelor of Communications, is
Angelenos don’t have to give up their love dance, music, theatre, and visual art. Start- taught by practicing moviemakers versa-
of the ocean. VFS offers a ing in their first semester, tile in TV and film. The school boasts one
deeply immersive curricu- undergraduate students of the best TV studio facilities in New Zea-
lum in film, animation, produce films and videos land, access to the best digital field equip-
video game production, in each year. SFU offers a ment, and a major practical project for all
VR/AR development, BFA in film, an extended students. You’re probably already aware
motion and interactive minor in film, or a minor that New Zealand’s handling of COVID-19
design, programming, in film and video stud- has made it the envy of the world.
art/production founda- ies. Filmmakers are also And the beaches… the beaches.
tion, and more. It offers welcome in the MFA Auckland is built on an isthmus and sits
12 advanced production program, and SFU is between two harbors. So students can
diploma programs that take a year or less— known for close relationships with festi- choose from waterfront cafes and restau-
the one in VR/AR design and development is vals, federal and provincial media agencies, rants at Wynyard Quarter and Britomart,
just eight months. broadcasters, labs, post-houses, sound and waterfront cycling and walking from
But there’s a catch: When you hear about houses, and other industry professionals. the central city to Mission Bay along Ta-
the beaches, you’ll want to stay longer. They In addition SFU’s close proximity to all maki Drive. Kohimarama is also popular
include English Beach, the site of beloved fire- the other Vancouver beaches we previously and accessible by public transport, and
works displays; the easy-access Sunset Beach, listed, the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, orcas and dolphins are known to make in-
famed for festivals; Kitsilano Beach, Vancou- one of SCA’s locations, is a mere 10-minute ner harbor cameos. Not far away are wild
ver’s answer to Venice Beach; and, for your best walk to the serene Vancouver Seawall, the West Coast beaches with strong surf and
friend, Hadden Park Dog Beach. world’s longest uninterrupted waterfront black sand. MM
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF AFTRS, NYFA AUSTRALIA AND VFS
137_Film Schools on the Beach_DONE_alt.indd 43 9/30/20 11:57 AM

FESTIVAL BEAT
SPONSORED EDITORIAL
NEVADA CITY FILM

FESTIVAL
Nevada City is one of those
dreamy places that seem to
only exist on the big screen.
Full of charm, interesting
people, and a little magic. So
when the 20th annual Nevada
City Film Festival kicked off
at the end of the summer, it
almost felt like a magic trick.
Organizers pulled from
their hat a stunning lineup of
movies, filmmakers and Q&As.
Attendees could choose to
participate online or in-person
via a drive-in held at the Ne- necessary. And thus, WHFF “We were determined to ATTENDEES MASK UP AT THE
vada County Fairgrounds. For Virtual was born. hold the festival this year in SIDEWALK FILM FESTIVAL
the drive-in format, car-hops Through hard work and one form or another as part of DIVERS DIVE INTO THE PROGRAM
delivered concessions while dedication, WHFF Virtual our mission to support emerg- AT THE WOODS HOLE FILM FESTIVAL
filmgoers watched selections successfully delivered an eight ing, independent filmmakers
including fest winners Bloody day event that presented 187 and to foster the ongoing
Nose, Empty Pockets and films from 25 different coun- relationships between film-
Freeland. tries with films from every makers and film viewers,” said said something completely
In 2020, the “Sundance of continent, including Antarcti- founder and executive director different,” says Rachel Morgan,
the Sierra” certainly earned its Judy Laster. “We are looking the creative director of the
name as a place for indepen- forward to observing the fes- festival. “Covid’s been a real
dent cinema and exciting tival’s 30th anniversary next slap in the face.”
new voices in film. And in a year, and if it has to be virtual My partner Jess Jacklin
show of support for those very again, we will be ready,” she and I recently founded a
voices, they split funds raised added. Either way, we’re cer- festival, StudioFest, and I find
from the streaming festival tain it’ll be inventive Morgan’s energy reassuring,
with filmmakers 50/50. despite her words. She is a
WOODS HOLE SIDEWALK FILM force—someone who gives the

impression that “yes, but” is
FILM FESTIVAL FESTIVAL the closest she’ll ever get to a

“no.” She has scrap.
By Charles Irving Beale People like her will be the
Organizers of the 29th
Woods Hole Film Festival It’s late August, not yet ones to save festivals, and
RIGHT: PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID A. SMITH
realized earlier this year that dusk, but cars are already maybe movies themselves.
LEFT: PHOTOGRAPH BY KRIS HUGHES
necessity is the mother of in- arriving at the Grand River In previous years, Sidewalk
vention. Back in March, they Drive-In, located in the heart occupied about a dozen
watched, with great concern, ca. The festival offered over 70 of Birmingham, Alabama. venues and screened over 350
as many other festivals large hours of live events, including They’ve come to the new, films. But it found an answer
and small, decided to cancel 28 Filmmaker Chats streamed temporary home of the to COVID-19 by turning, as
or postpone their 2020 edi- live to Facebook, 43 live Q&As Sidewalk Film Festival. so many festivals have, to the
tions due to the pandemic. with feature filmmakers, eight “If you had asked me about local drive-in. It has brought
They dug their heels in and workshops and panels and five the future of festivals six opportunities, challenges,
decided that WHFF was music events. months ago, I would have and decisiveness. Sidewalk
137_Festival Beat_DONE.indd 62 9/30/20 11:16 AM

AIFF_MMM AD_Vert PRINT.pdf 1 9/11/20 2:00 PM
MAINE
screened 150 films this year.
The setting has affected her
INTERNATIONAL
strategy, Morgan says.
“It’s a drive-in: How many
FILM FESTIVAL
Hot summer nights. Drive-in C
hard-hitting social justice theater screens pulsing with M
docs can you really do? How light. Moments of laughter.

many international films Moments of wonder. For 10
Y
with subtitles can you really days in July, this year’s Maine CM
do? You can’t have that every International Film Festival MY
single night because it’s made us forget that 2020 was,

really hard to digest that at a well, 2020.
CY
drive-in,” she says. Sidewalk’s During the height of the CMY
approach was to go “rep COVID-19 pandemic, MIFF piv- K
heavy,” focusing on repertory oted from the in-person format

films, cult classics and notable that’s been in place since its
older movies that skew founding in 1998 and delivered
viscerally and favor genre over a wonderful hybrid of drive-in
subtext and subtlety. films and virtual activities. Its
The entire film industry virtual component allowed
is in for a massive shift: audiences to enjoy films, Q&As,
Blockbusters can’t make and live streams from home.
23RD ANNUAL 2021 CALL F0R ENTRIES

OPENS NOV. 1ST
FILM FESTIVAL
• A SIGN SAYS IT ALL AT THE

THE SIDEWALK FILM FIESTIVAL
ENTER CODE
money in U.S. theaters with Some of the highlights from
SWXMM23
the pandemic at large, and
finishing bonds for small-to-
this year’s festival included
Actually, Iconic: Richard Estes, FOR 23% OFF
mid-level films are on hold
while COVID-19 compliance
Represent, and the From Away
Shorts program. YOUR SUBMISSION FEE
eats into the margins.
This year’s StudioFest was
And while the decision to
be one of the first festivals to
ON FILMFREEWAY
PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID A. SMITH
set for Austin, before the adopt the drive-in format set
pandemic forced us to delay it apart, MIFFs’ decision to
it. And I’ve been looking for dedicate the festival to people
inspiration. It’s going to be of color who have been killed
hard. It’s going to take scrap. by racist violence demonstrated
But as the line of cars on this
August night in Alabama
that the festival is truly special.
We think the 2020 edition will
LEARN MORE AT
proves, scrap pays off. be tough to beat next year. MM PRESENTED BY
SIDEWALKFEST.COM
137_Festival Beat_DONE.indd 63 9/30/20 11:16 AM

AD INDEX
American Film Market (53) Columbia College Chicago Screenplay Awards Network Sidewalk Film Festival
americanfilmmarket.com (17) (111) (109)
colum.edu/ctva screenplayawardsnetwork.com sidewalkfest.com
Ashland Independent Film
Festival Houston Film Commission SAGindie SENE Film, Music &
(109) (9, C3) (C4) Arts Festival
ashlandfilm.org houstonfilm sagindie.org (13)
commission.com senefest.com
Blackmagic Design San Antonio Film Commission
(3) Northwest Arkansas Film & (7) Trew Audio
blackmagicdesign.com Entertainment Commission filmsanantonio.com (11)
(C2) trewaudio.com
Can You Clear Me Now filmnwa.org San Diego Film Office
(17) (1) WorldFest Houston
canyouclearmenow.com Pierce Law Group LLP sdfilm.org (83)
(41) worldfest.org
Colorado Film School piercelawgroupllp.com San Luis Obispo International
(107) Film Festival
coloradofilmschool.co (111)
slofilmfest.org
California. Dubbed the “Sundance of the The 12th annual SENE FILM, MUSIC &
CALL FOR ENTRIES
Sierra,” NCFF is known for its emphasis ARTS FESTIVAL is dedicated to giving life to
on fiercely independent cinema and its independent cinema, music, and art, this
The 20th ASHLAND INDEPENDENT FILM supportive arts and cultural scene. Learn October in Rhode Island. There’s $30,000
FESTIVAL runs April 15-29, 2021. All features more at nevadacityfilmfestival.com in awards/prizes, 50+ jury awards, and 20+
will receive exhibition fees, and all films will audience awards. All submissions receive two
be up for jury award cash prizes. Last year’s San Luis Obispo is not only known for its free weekend film passes. Visit senefest.com
festival, among MovieMaker’s Best Online wine, beaches, rural charm, and friendly
Film Festivals of 2020, drew plaudits for its small towns. It’s also the home of the world- The call for entries for the 23rd annual
programming and filmmaker socializing class SAN LUIS OBISPO INTERNATIONAL SIDEWALK FILM FESTIVAL opens November
and networking opportunities. Apply at FILM FESTIVAL where Movies Matter! High 1. We accept documentary and narrative
filmfreeway.com/ashlandfilm quality programming, well organized, great shorts and features, music videos, VR
networking opportunities, and an easy drive submissions, episodic pilots, short scripts,
Since 2001, NEVADA CITY FILM FESTIVAL from L.A. and San Francisco. Learn more at feature scripts, and animated submissions.
has brought top independent film and slofilmfest.org Questions about submissions? Reach out to
comedy, along with thousands of attendees, filmtraffic@sidewalkfest.com
international filmmakers, and industry The SCREENPLAY AWARDS NETWORK is a
guests to the historic town of Nevada City, revolutionary talent curation platform. Be part of the film festival that gave
Backed by a film financing and script Spielberg, Lucas, and the Coen Brothers
development firm, they discover talent, their first awards! Entries for the 54th
provide a clear pathway to production, WORLDFEST-HOUSTON INTERNATIONAL
and bring screenwriters closer to financial FILM FESTIVAL are now open. The festival
viability. Enter your script today and see will be held at the Memorial City Cinemark
why writers are getting produced at record Theaters from April 16-25, 2021. Submit
speed. Visit screenplayawardsnetwork. your short, documentary, feature film,
com or contact us at support@ music video, experimental or student film at
screenplayawardsnetwork.com worldfest.org or filmfreeway.com/worldfest
137_AdIndexCFE_DONE.indd 78 9/30/20 11:12 AM

FESTIVAL SPOTLIGHT
SPONSORED EDITORIAL
WORLDFEST
Screenplay
T
here’s a reason everything about
WorldFest feels out of this world:
Hunter Todd founded it in 1968 after A W A R D S N E T W O R K
producing countless documentaries about
the U.S. space program. They won prizes,
and the federal government sent him to
HUNTER TODD
outrageously fun European festivals to
collect. He came home with an idea:
“I thought, what this country needs is a film festival!” Todd laughs.
WorldFest was only the third festival in the U.S., and has only
rocketed to greater heights since its launch, shifting amicably from Connecting Screenwriters with
film to tape to digital, having fun all the way, and doing everything PRODUCERS & INVESTORS
big. The Houston festival has 200 categories, so there’s a place for
every kind of filmmaker. We bridge the gap to investors & producers through instant
“We think if you have a comedy short it should not have to compete access to the top industry script developers and cutting edge tech.
with a science fiction short,” Todd explains. Day in and day out, we curate the best emerging screenwriters and
bring them to the intersection of artistry and financial viability.
Todd is a natural storyteller who has seen it all, with anecdotes
about everyone from Steven Spielberg to Ang Lee to George Lucas, all
of whom have come through WorldFest. A proper accounting of all the
films and filmmakers it has helped launch would require a magazine WWW.SCREENPLAYAWARDSNETWORK.COM
longer than this one.
“One guy told me, ‘Hunter, I’ve been trying to get to CAA for two
years. They wouldn’t even forward my phone calls. I won your prize,
and they called me for lunch tomorrow.’”
WorldFest’s cherished Remi awards grace offices all over the
planet. “We have made them for dogs,” Todd notes. “Benji has a Remi
statuette.”
This spring, COVID-19 forced WorldFest to cancel for the first time
in more than 50 years. But it will be back. Or blast off to a new planet,
big enough for all its history and ambition.
PLAYTHINKENTERTAINMENT
COURTESY OF WORLDFEST-HOUSTON INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
The very best movies

are the ones that stay with
us long after the lights
come back on. The ones
that we think about as we
drift to sleep. The ones
that we dream about.
Playthinkentertainment
believes, above all else, in
COURSTESY OF SHUTTERSTOCK
the power of storytelling. So much so that their mission is to

help moviemakers cultivate their story and get it out for the
world to enjoy. Their content incubator is home to dozens
of award-winning writers, directors and producers who
apply a tried-and-true philosophy focused on vivid character
development and the power of entertainment value. Let the
storytelling begin. MM
137_Festival Spotlight_In Focus_DONE.indd 72 9/30/20 10:52 AM

EYE PIECE
• PHEDON
PAPAMICHAEL
CHECKS THE
SKIES
WEATHER and we created a big light box

outside that’s shielded. So we
courtroom continuously for
REPORT
these other vignettes, and
were independent of changing none of those are linear either,
weather conditions, and I could so it was really a big puzzle.
control it—to either have hard I attempted to mix it up and
light or soft, rainy, overcast make it as visually stimulating
moods. Inside, I basically only as possible.
used little practical fixtures,
The Trial of The Chicago 7 cinematographer Phedon which are the wall sconces and
As in James Mangold’s Ford
v. Ferrari, I chose the ARRI AL-
Papamichael used weather through windows to tell a other practical lights that I con- EXA LF package with expanded
story of rebellion trolled. They’re warm and more
prominent for days when it was
anamorphics, and I felt it lends
itself some optical quality to
raining and overcast. this period, and also the aspect
BY PHEDON PAPAMICHAEL AS TOLD TO CALEB HAMMOND On the first day of the ratio is 2:40—I wanted to tie PHOTO BY NIKO TAVERNISE, COURTESY OF NETFLIX
trial, I played it sunny because all these faces together. There
the mood was more upbeat, are seven to 10 characters
enthusiastic. Our protagonists sitting next to each other, and
T
HE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 is all nonlinear. feel like heroes, taking on the I wanted to connect them. I
It leaves the courtroom, goes to a riot scene that’s system. Later, when Michael like being physically close with
maybe three seconds long, then you go back into Keaton (as Ramsey Clark) or wider lenses, which is some-
the courtroom, and then to a different day in the Sacha Baron Cohen (as Abbie thing I do with Mangold a lot.
courtroom and a different lighting situation. All of Hoffman) were on the stand, Sorkin had seen Ford v. Ferrari
that was extremely challenging for me, because I’m tracking the I played it more subdued, in pre-production and he really
trial from fall September of 1969 until February of 1970. I wanted like a rainy or overcast day. I liked it. Even if the shot is a
to play with that, creating different moods and different lighting created a whole chart where closeup of someone speaking,
situations inside the courtroom. I’d assign different moods to you feel all of the characters.
While the original courtroom didn’t even have any window each courtroom day. And then, You feel their reactions and see
light sources, our courtroom set had three big window sources, of course, you’re leaving the their looks. MM
112
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T H E W O R L D ’ S 5 0 B E S T G E N R E F E S T I VA L S

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22. The In-Between Mo- CHAPTER TWO:

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CHAPTER THREE: 74. Just Dance

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Caleb Hammond, MovieMaker Magazine: What’s your history with fulldome?

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