With Laurie Collyer
Director and screenwriter Laurie Collyer is in the Dramatic Competition with Sherrybaby. It’s just her second fictional film and she’s two for two at Sundance. The film was developed at the Sundance Filmmakers Lab and the Cinéfondation of the Cannes International Film Festival.
Collyer says the film was 5 years in the making and by the time she finally got her funding it was the wrong season of the year: summer. The lush palette of the season did suit the social realism or her story she says, or her vision, which was inspirted by neo-realist films. “I wanted to make a black and white film in color,” she explains.
So she and cinematographer Russell Fine (Naqoyqatsi) started capturing the too-rich summer colors and light, planning to deal with the issue in the DI. Collyer said she never doubted she would get the look she needed, acknowledging that colorists John Dowdell and Peter Headey made magic in collaboration with
Fine.
Tim Spitzer, Managing Director at Goldcrest Post Production started with already scanned HD D5 footage (normally Goldcrest would do the scans). The team did the editorial, some additional scans and went into DI on a Quantel eQ running Q color–the guts of Quantel’s new Pablo.
“As an independent filmmaker your choices of location and time of year are limited,” Collyer says. “The technolgoy we have now is such a blessing. The ability to make stylistic choices in post gives us incredible freedom.”
