IndieWire reached out to the cinematographers behind the nonfiction features premiering at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and asked which cameras, lenses, and formats they used, and why they chose them to create the looks and meet the production demands of their films. Here are their responses.
Films appear in alphabetical order by title.
“All That Breathes“
Section: World Cinema Documentary Competition
Dir: Shaunak Sen, DoP: Ben Bernhard
Format: 4K Canon Log/ V-Log
Camera: Canon Eos C500MkII, Panasonic S1H
Lens: Leica R Primes and Zooms, Angenieux 45-90mm, Canon 500mm and Macro
Bernhard: In “All That Breathes,“ our approach was always “to render the scientific into the poetic,“ as Shaunak puts it. We were intrigued by how the organic matter of the earth shifts and changes because of human intervention, and how new natural habitats are formed. That’s why we chose a cinematic language that would keep the...
Films appear in alphabetical order by title.
“All That Breathes“
Section: World Cinema Documentary Competition
Dir: Shaunak Sen, DoP: Ben Bernhard
Format: 4K Canon Log/ V-Log
Camera: Canon Eos C500MkII, Panasonic S1H
Lens: Leica R Primes and Zooms, Angenieux 45-90mm, Canon 500mm and Macro
Bernhard: In “All That Breathes,“ our approach was always “to render the scientific into the poetic,“ as Shaunak puts it. We were intrigued by how the organic matter of the earth shifts and changes because of human intervention, and how new natural habitats are formed. That’s why we chose a cinematic language that would keep the...
- 1/27/2022
- by Sarah Shachat
- Indiewire
As the #MeToo movement continues to resonate, filmmaker Nina Menkes has unveiled details about her forthcoming documentary Brainwashed and the all-female team behind it. The feature docu exposes common cinematic techniques that disempower women and girls. Produced, conceived and directed by Menkes, the film is slated for completion in mid-2021 and will be entered for festival consideration.
The docu gives incisive commentary on films from the 1940s through the present. Using key scenes from A-list directors, Menkes spotlights how filmmakers employ framing, lighting, visual effects and camera angles to disempower women while appearing to glamorize them. These cinematic techniques for disempowerment have been dubbed “The Menkes List.”
Maria Giese and Summer Xinlei Yang have boarded the project as co-producers. Giese is the DGA member who instigated the groundbreaking 2015 industry-wide federal investigation of sex discrimination in Hollywood. Yang is an independent producer and founder of Summary Productions. Giese is also featured...
The docu gives incisive commentary on films from the 1940s through the present. Using key scenes from A-list directors, Menkes spotlights how filmmakers employ framing, lighting, visual effects and camera angles to disempower women while appearing to glamorize them. These cinematic techniques for disempowerment have been dubbed “The Menkes List.”
Maria Giese and Summer Xinlei Yang have boarded the project as co-producers. Giese is the DGA member who instigated the groundbreaking 2015 industry-wide federal investigation of sex discrimination in Hollywood. Yang is an independent producer and founder of Summary Productions. Giese is also featured...
- 10/9/2020
- by Dino-Ray Ramos
- Deadline Film + TV
Doc NYC will open its 10th edition next month with Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, the feature from Daniel Roher that served as the opening-night film of this year’s Toronto Film Festival. It kicks off a lineup that includes 136 feature-length documentaries and 28 world premieres among more than 300 films and events overall, repping the biggest slate yet for the event already considered the nation’s largest documentary festival.
The New York-set fest also said Thursday that it will close with Ebs Burnough’s The Capote Tapes, a fresh portrait of Truman Capote, with André Leon Talley part of a post-screening Q&a with the director. Doc NYC’s centerpiece presentation is another Tiff pic, Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator, from director Eva Orner.
The slate includes world bows for pics including Joe Berliner’s The Longest Wave, Keith Fulton and Lou Pepe’s He Dreams of Giants about...
The New York-set fest also said Thursday that it will close with Ebs Burnough’s The Capote Tapes, a fresh portrait of Truman Capote, with André Leon Talley part of a post-screening Q&a with the director. Doc NYC’s centerpiece presentation is another Tiff pic, Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator, from director Eva Orner.
The slate includes world bows for pics including Joe Berliner’s The Longest Wave, Keith Fulton and Lou Pepe’s He Dreams of Giants about...
- 10/10/2019
- by Patrick Hipes
- Deadline Film + TV
Academy invitee Eddie Redmayne in 'The Theory of Everything.' Academy invites 322 new members: 'More diverse and inclusive list of filmmakers and artists than ever before' The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has offered membership to 322 individuals "who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to theatrical motion pictures." According to the Academy's press release, "those who accept the invitations will be the only additions to the Academy's membership in 2015." In case all 322 potential new members say an enthusiastic Yes, that means an injection of new blood representing about 5 percent of the Academy's current membership. In the words of Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs (as quoted in the press release), in 2015 "our branches have recognized a more diverse and inclusive list of filmmakers and artists than ever before, and we look forward to adding their creativity, ideas and experience to our organization." In recent years, the Academy membership has...
- 7/1/2015
- by Anna Robinson
- Alt Film Guide
©Renzo Piano Building Workshop/©Studio Pali Fekete architects/©A.M.P.A.S.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced this week that the Los Angeles City Council, in a unanimous vote, approved plans for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Construction will begin this summer, and ceremonial groundbreaking festivities will occur this fall.
“I am thrilled that Los Angeles is gaining another architectural and cultural icon,” said Mayor Eric Garcetti. “My office of economic development has worked directly with the museum’s development team to ensure that the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will create jobs, support tourism, and pay homage to the industry that helped define our identity as the creative capital of the world.”
“We are grateful to our incredible community of supporters who have helped make this museum a reality,” said Dawn Hudson, the Academy’s CEO. “Building this museum has been an Academy...
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced this week that the Los Angeles City Council, in a unanimous vote, approved plans for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Construction will begin this summer, and ceremonial groundbreaking festivities will occur this fall.
“I am thrilled that Los Angeles is gaining another architectural and cultural icon,” said Mayor Eric Garcetti. “My office of economic development has worked directly with the museum’s development team to ensure that the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will create jobs, support tourism, and pay homage to the industry that helped define our identity as the creative capital of the world.”
“We are grateful to our incredible community of supporters who have helped make this museum a reality,” said Dawn Hudson, the Academy’s CEO. “Building this museum has been an Academy...
- 6/27/2015
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Strangely dropping a press release on a historic day where the nation's attention is elsewhere, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed their annual list of new member invitees this morning. For those who criticize the makeup of the Academy there was some good news and the stark realization the organization still has a long way to go. The Academy has spent the last eight to 10 years attempting to diversify its membership and this year's class mostly reflects that. There are significantly more invitees of Asian and African-American descent, but the male to female disparity is still depressing. Out of the 25 potential new members of the Actor's Branch only seven are women. And, no, there isn't really an acceptable way for the Academy to spin that sad fact. Additionally, It's important to realize the 322 people noted in the release have only been invited to join Hollywood's most exclusive club.
- 6/26/2015
- by Gregory Ellwood
- Hitfix
PARK CITY -- The universality and humanity of Shakespeare's words have never been more evident than in Hank Rogerson's remarkable documentary "Shakespeare Behind Bars". Film follows a troupe of actor/prisoners for a year as they prepare a production of "The Tempest", a play which fittingly deals with forgiveness and redemption. Emotional honesty of the material should make doc a moving experience in theaters as well as on cable outlets.
Shakespeare has been a part of rehabilitation efforts at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in Kentucky for seven years thanks to an enlightened warden who gives Rogerson and his crew surprisingly free reign for a maximum security prison. Inmates have two lives in the film--as actors and prisoners--and we get to follow them into their cells, mess hall and even into solitary confinement.
These are not just your garden variety criminals. Many of them have committed heinous crimes, everything from child molestation to murder. Curiously, Rogerson does not touch on how or why these prisoners were drawn to the program in the first place, but now that they're there, it's easy to see what it means to them. Acting gives them a chance to explore their inner life, and god knows they have plenty of baggage to bring to the process.
Directors always have to put up with unexpected developments, but that's nothing compared to what happens here. Volunteer director Curt Tofteland has to deal with actors dropping out when they are thrown in the hole for misbehaving. "This is Shakespeare behind bars," says one of the actors. "This is not Mary Poppins productions."
Rogerson style is not intrusive, he just sits back and observes and allows the inmates to reveal themselves in their own time. Eventually we get to hear their stories. Hall, who plays the lead Prospero, is a tortured soul who electrocuted his wife by tossing a hair dryer into the bath tub. Grappling to get at the meat of his character he says, "after 46 years of being in a tight clamp, I don't know how to unclamp."
There is something wonderful about watching these macho men struggling to find themselves in their characters. Big G, who plays the monster Caliban, is a burly guy doing time for killing a cop when he was 21. As he works folding wash in the Laundromat, he goes over his lines to himself.
Red, a diminutive black man, reluctantly takes the part of Miranda, a 15 year-old ingenue who doesn't know who her mother is. He is having trouble getting into the character until he realizes that he was the same age when he found out who his father was. It's both surprising and satisfying to see these men finding relevance in Shakespeare's words.
Just as Shakespeare did, Rogerson finds the humanity in his characters. While not mitigating their crimes, the film has the generosity of spirit to see the whole person. As several of the actors come up for parole and we root for them, the film poses tough questions about the nature of forgiveness.
Tofteland believes Shakespeare would have appreciated his motley crew of actors. "People in the theater back in Elizabethan times were thought of as pickpockets, thieves, rapists and murderers," he says. Cinematographer Shana Hagan's unfussy photography and James Wesley Stemple's lovely classical score help set the stage for Shakespeare, but it is these most unlikely actors who make it come alive.
SHAKESPEARE BEHIND BARS
A Philomath Films production in association with Independent Television Service and the BBC
Credits:
Director: Hank Rogerson
Writer: Rogerson
Producer: Jilann Spitzmiller
Director of photography: Shana Hagan
Music: James Wesley Stemple
Editor: Victor Livingston
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 92 minutes...
Shakespeare has been a part of rehabilitation efforts at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in Kentucky for seven years thanks to an enlightened warden who gives Rogerson and his crew surprisingly free reign for a maximum security prison. Inmates have two lives in the film--as actors and prisoners--and we get to follow them into their cells, mess hall and even into solitary confinement.
These are not just your garden variety criminals. Many of them have committed heinous crimes, everything from child molestation to murder. Curiously, Rogerson does not touch on how or why these prisoners were drawn to the program in the first place, but now that they're there, it's easy to see what it means to them. Acting gives them a chance to explore their inner life, and god knows they have plenty of baggage to bring to the process.
Directors always have to put up with unexpected developments, but that's nothing compared to what happens here. Volunteer director Curt Tofteland has to deal with actors dropping out when they are thrown in the hole for misbehaving. "This is Shakespeare behind bars," says one of the actors. "This is not Mary Poppins productions."
Rogerson style is not intrusive, he just sits back and observes and allows the inmates to reveal themselves in their own time. Eventually we get to hear their stories. Hall, who plays the lead Prospero, is a tortured soul who electrocuted his wife by tossing a hair dryer into the bath tub. Grappling to get at the meat of his character he says, "after 46 years of being in a tight clamp, I don't know how to unclamp."
There is something wonderful about watching these macho men struggling to find themselves in their characters. Big G, who plays the monster Caliban, is a burly guy doing time for killing a cop when he was 21. As he works folding wash in the Laundromat, he goes over his lines to himself.
Red, a diminutive black man, reluctantly takes the part of Miranda, a 15 year-old ingenue who doesn't know who her mother is. He is having trouble getting into the character until he realizes that he was the same age when he found out who his father was. It's both surprising and satisfying to see these men finding relevance in Shakespeare's words.
Just as Shakespeare did, Rogerson finds the humanity in his characters. While not mitigating their crimes, the film has the generosity of spirit to see the whole person. As several of the actors come up for parole and we root for them, the film poses tough questions about the nature of forgiveness.
Tofteland believes Shakespeare would have appreciated his motley crew of actors. "People in the theater back in Elizabethan times were thought of as pickpockets, thieves, rapists and murderers," he says. Cinematographer Shana Hagan's unfussy photography and James Wesley Stemple's lovely classical score help set the stage for Shakespeare, but it is these most unlikely actors who make it come alive.
SHAKESPEARE BEHIND BARS
A Philomath Films production in association with Independent Television Service and the BBC
Credits:
Director: Hank Rogerson
Writer: Rogerson
Producer: Jilann Spitzmiller
Director of photography: Shana Hagan
Music: James Wesley Stemple
Editor: Victor Livingston
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 92 minutes...
AFI Fest
Back in 1981, hairdresser Michael McKinley took it upon himself to diffuse growing tensions between the gay and rival gang factions in his Southern California Silver Lake neighborhood by organizing a street fair and hiring members from both camps to provide security.
While the LAPD warned that it was a bloodbath waiting to happen, the two-day outdoor bash proved to be a peaceful smash. More than two decades later, the Sunset Junction Street Fair has become the largest such event in California.
The logistics of putting on an event that brings throngs of very diverse people are chronicled in "Sunset Junction", a thoughtful, but pedestrian documentary that fails to do justice to its colorful milieu.
Directed by Peter Jones (whose "Biography" two-hour special on Judy Garland won a 1997 Emmy) and co-directed by editor Mark A. Catalena, the film spends a long time establishing the dynamic between the flamboyant-Diana-Ross-and-the-Supremes-obsessed McKinley and the mainly Latino young men and women from troubled backgrounds who form a part of his year-round youth program and help organize the street fair.
More involving is the event itself, which not only must deal with that potentially troublesome gang element each year but also the tangle of bureaucratic red tape that goes along with the challenge of accommodating as many as a quarter of a million people in the traditionally iffy juncture where Sunset and Santa Monica boulevards meet.
A tighter edit for the 100-minute production would definitely help, but even with Shana Hagan's vivid photography and the participation of Supreme diva Mary Wilson (whose rendition of "Someday We'll Be Together" takes on special meaning), this inspirational story needed a more inspired telling.
Back in 1981, hairdresser Michael McKinley took it upon himself to diffuse growing tensions between the gay and rival gang factions in his Southern California Silver Lake neighborhood by organizing a street fair and hiring members from both camps to provide security.
While the LAPD warned that it was a bloodbath waiting to happen, the two-day outdoor bash proved to be a peaceful smash. More than two decades later, the Sunset Junction Street Fair has become the largest such event in California.
The logistics of putting on an event that brings throngs of very diverse people are chronicled in "Sunset Junction", a thoughtful, but pedestrian documentary that fails to do justice to its colorful milieu.
Directed by Peter Jones (whose "Biography" two-hour special on Judy Garland won a 1997 Emmy) and co-directed by editor Mark A. Catalena, the film spends a long time establishing the dynamic between the flamboyant-Diana-Ross-and-the-Supremes-obsessed McKinley and the mainly Latino young men and women from troubled backgrounds who form a part of his year-round youth program and help organize the street fair.
More involving is the event itself, which not only must deal with that potentially troublesome gang element each year but also the tangle of bureaucratic red tape that goes along with the challenge of accommodating as many as a quarter of a million people in the traditionally iffy juncture where Sunset and Santa Monica boulevards meet.
A tighter edit for the 100-minute production would definitely help, but even with Shana Hagan's vivid photography and the participation of Supreme diva Mary Wilson (whose rendition of "Someday We'll Be Together" takes on special meaning), this inspirational story needed a more inspired telling.
AFI Fest
Back in 1981, hairdresser Michael McKinley took it upon himself to diffuse growing tensions between the gay and rival gang factions in his Southern California Silver Lake neighborhood by organizing a street fair and hiring members from both camps to provide security.
While the LAPD warned that it was a bloodbath waiting to happen, the two-day outdoor bash proved to be a peaceful smash. More than two decades later, the Sunset Junction Street Fair has become the largest such event in California.
The logistics of putting on an event that brings throngs of very diverse people are chronicled in "Sunset Junction", a thoughtful, but pedestrian documentary that fails to do justice to its colorful milieu.
Directed by Peter Jones (whose "Biography" two-hour special on Judy Garland won a 1997 Emmy) and co-directed by editor Mark A. Catalena, the film spends a long time establishing the dynamic between the flamboyant-Diana-Ross-and-the-Supremes-obsessed McKinley and the mainly Latino young men and women from troubled backgrounds who form a part of his year-round youth program and help organize the street fair.
More involving is the event itself, which not only must deal with that potentially troublesome gang element each year but also the tangle of bureaucratic red tape that goes along with the challenge of accommodating as many as a quarter of a million people in the traditionally iffy juncture where Sunset and Santa Monica boulevards meet.
A tighter edit for the 100-minute production would definitely help, but even with Shana Hagan's vivid photography and the participation of Supreme diva Mary Wilson (whose rendition of "Someday We'll Be Together" takes on special meaning), this inspirational story needed a more inspired telling.
Back in 1981, hairdresser Michael McKinley took it upon himself to diffuse growing tensions between the gay and rival gang factions in his Southern California Silver Lake neighborhood by organizing a street fair and hiring members from both camps to provide security.
While the LAPD warned that it was a bloodbath waiting to happen, the two-day outdoor bash proved to be a peaceful smash. More than two decades later, the Sunset Junction Street Fair has become the largest such event in California.
The logistics of putting on an event that brings throngs of very diverse people are chronicled in "Sunset Junction", a thoughtful, but pedestrian documentary that fails to do justice to its colorful milieu.
Directed by Peter Jones (whose "Biography" two-hour special on Judy Garland won a 1997 Emmy) and co-directed by editor Mark A. Catalena, the film spends a long time establishing the dynamic between the flamboyant-Diana-Ross-and-the-Supremes-obsessed McKinley and the mainly Latino young men and women from troubled backgrounds who form a part of his year-round youth program and help organize the street fair.
More involving is the event itself, which not only must deal with that potentially troublesome gang element each year but also the tangle of bureaucratic red tape that goes along with the challenge of accommodating as many as a quarter of a million people in the traditionally iffy juncture where Sunset and Santa Monica boulevards meet.
A tighter edit for the 100-minute production would definitely help, but even with Shana Hagan's vivid photography and the participation of Supreme diva Mary Wilson (whose rendition of "Someday We'll Be Together" takes on special meaning), this inspirational story needed a more inspired telling.
- 11/17/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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