INDIE Chair

IFCO's TECHNICAL DIRECTOR INTERVIEWS FILMMAKER JOHN PRICE

Roger Wilson: Where did your interest in filmmaking develop from? Did your parents make films or shoot home movies while you were growing up?

John Price: I think my main influence while growing up is with my parents, where my mother, whose been a painter all her life and my father, whose been an engineer, a scientist all his life. Combining art with technology, film is the perfect medium... My father had given me a cheap little plastic still camera when I was about thirteen years old and that was my first introduction to photography and he bought me a little darkroom starter kit as well. Although he wasn't into that sort of stuff and he didn't have any idea that I would be interested in it he just sort of took a shot in to the dark and gave me the stuff and it started me on my way.

RW: When did you start to work with motion picture film?

JP: I did a lot of still photography in high school so I decided to go to Ryerson which had a still photography department but by the time I had gotten to Ryerson I had discovered film. I made my first film in 1968 on Super 8.

IFCO Member's Profile

Name: Deniz Berkin
Films: see www.awakeatdawn.com

 










1. Why make films? When did you realize wanted to make films?
I started making films when I was 14. I’ve always wanted to make films. I like to tell stories and nobody listens to me when I talk so I force them to sit in a dark room and I show them my stories. If they try to leave before the film is over, I may have to tie them to the chair.

IFCO Member's Profile

 

Name: (Sarah) Bridget Farr 
Membership: Since 1995!

Films: I'm currently shooting #10.

1. Why make films? When did you realize wanted to make films?

Good question.

2. What's your process of creation? Who's involved with it?

I use a lot of paper. Writing, storyboarding, list-making...and no one person has been involved in every one of my films. I tend to get help from whoever is around.

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Every time I show my movie THEY COME AT NIGHT (2007), the most common question that arises is: “how did you shoot that scene where she falls down the rabbit hole?”

The answer is very simple; it’s not a real rabbit hole.

No, seriously, there is a trick.

While we were working on the shoot for TCAN, an American horror movie came out entitled PULSE. On the poster, a woman was tangled in a web of arms coming out from underneath her. I was afraid people would think that the idea/influence for my film was from that movie.

DEFENDING MICHAEL BAY

 

There are few directors working today who get more vitriolic prose spewed at them than Michael Bay. Whether in print or on internet forums, vocal film fans simply love to unleash a torrent of hate towards his movies, often in long-winded digressions which reveal more about the writer of the critique than of Bay’s work as a director. And I always wonder where this hate is coming from. People often point to him as the destroyer of cinema but why? Movies speak to a diverse and wide range of viewers. There are those in the audience who look for subtlety and emotion in film while others simply want to be entertained. Michael Bay movies have never been subtle or emotional, but they sure are entertaining.