IndieWire's Filmmaker Toolkit

One of the best reviewed films of 2020 is coming to VOD early (Apr 3), but before its theatrical run got cut short by COVID-19 I sat down with writer/director Eliza Hittman and one of her closest collaborators, her husband and editor Scott Cummings, to talk about the origins and making of this incredible film. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sciamma talks about how to film desire, memory, and getting out of the conventions of a normal love story. She breaks down the creation of the incredible chanting song and bonfire scene, the laborious process of lighting the interiors, and how filming the ideas behind a movie can be the most rewarding type of cinema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the help of translator Sharon Choi, director Bong talks about the careful construction of the Oscar winner “Parasite.” From his days of being a tutor and that feeling of infiltrating a wealthy family's home, to the careful construction of the house set in his film, to the profound influence of Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How after over 40 years of working with Martin Scorsese, "The Irishman" offered something the 3-time Academy Award winning editor had never done before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wilde explains how Big Lebowski influenced Booksmart, being intimidated about not having gone to film school, advice she got from Clint Eastwood about directing herself (in her upcoming thriller/horror film), and building ultimate high school movie soundtrack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lulu Wang on learning not to compromise her voice, how and why she used widescreen long takes, shooting in China, her next sci-fi project, and her real life grandma. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gerwig goes deep into the process, craft and inspiration behind her remarkable adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Deakins and Mendes talk about shooting their new WWI film so it was experienced as one-long take. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tarantino talks about about falling in love with Richardson and the unusual circumstances in which he hired him to shoot "Kill Bill." While the two collaborators breakdown their most recent film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." Recorded at Camerimage in Poland, where Tarantino and Richardson were honored for their work together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Safdie Brothers break down their improbable 10 year journey to making "Uncut Gems," working their way through a handful of different NBA stars (including Kobe Bryant), while "earning their stripes" and learning how to tell a story of this scale. What it meant to go union, how famed cinematographer Darius Khondji helped shape the project and sound mixer Skip Lievsay introduced them to incredible possibilities with sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Heller emotionally grounded a story about Mr. Rogers and made it her own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spoiler Warning: Rian Johnson gets into the nuts and bolts of how he built his modern day Agatha Christie whodunit, the murder mystery "Knives Out." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trey talks about writing / scoring Waves to Frank Ocean, Kayne West and Animal Collective, while mining his personal story of grief, as we break down the color, sound and movement of his remarkable third film. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The duo behind the Netflix's "American Factory" share their insight into how documentary filmmakers can gain trust and access, crafting story, and how they shot this remarkable film. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Marriage Story" Director Noah Baumbach by Chris O'Falt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"One Child Nation" Director Nanfu Wang by Chris O'Falt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mangold breaks down what’s wrong with our modern day green screen, sensory overload action films and how his new racing film, “Ford v Ferrari,” is a throwback to a more classical mode of Hollywood filmmaking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most Screenwriters Work to Music, Robert Eggers Listened to Waves and Wind in creating Willem Dafoe's Pirate Dialect. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cotton Club was intended to be a well balanced story about the black and white performers, patrons and gangsters of the legendary Harlem club in the 1920s & 30s. Coppola talks about the pressure he faced to trim down the film so it focused more on Richard Gere's story and his recent effort to restore and re-edit it to bring the film back to what was originally intended. "Cotton Club Encore" is theaters this weekend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Kubrick, Brad Pitt and how hard it is to make a film in a black box with one actor on a wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Praised by Guillermo del Toro, Aronofsky, Iñárritu and critics everywhere, Landes is one of the most exciting new directors to emerge this year. On the podcast he talks about making his allegory for the 60 year Colombian Civil War, shooting in impossible situations, and how he got composer Mica Levi to score the film. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 14 time Oscar nominee on the importance of the right location, why VFX shouldn't be separate from cinematography, and how Donna Tart's novel felt personal to him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stiller on what it took to make his prison escape series as authentic as humanly possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tenaglia and Collins talk about their 19 year collaboration with Bourdain, how he found his voice, the show evolved, and avoided the traps of cookie-cutter TV. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Headland talks about the fear of how to end the show and the misogynist side of the auteur theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The husband-wife duo dig into S2 of their Emmy winning show to explore how they've translated their trademark dialogue into cinematic visuals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The director behind “Battle of the Bastards” and “Hardhome” takes us inside the creation of some the series’ biggest moments. Sapochnik also brings us inside the show’s final season, including the arduous 55-night shoot of “The Longest Night,” and how he filmed the destruction of King’s Landing, in the penultimate episode “The Bells,” through the lens of questioning his own role in creating the show’s most violent moments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Esmail scored his thriller with old film scores, adapting the popular podcast, and how both writing & directing "Mr. Robot" is unsustainable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hader returns to the podcast to talk about having the confidence to find his voice as a director in S2, breaking down "Ronny/Lily" and the season finale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stahelski breaks down how he pulled off the big John Wick 3 action scenes and explains why Keanu's character will never walk off into the sunset. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did Terry Gilliam finally make the most cursed production in movie history? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How "Roma" is the extension of the ideas and filmmaking Cuarón explored in "Children of Men" and "Y Tu Mamá También." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Oscar nominee talks about how his incredible skateboarding movie became a story of domestic abuse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Har'el on taking Shia Labeouf's pain and therapy and turning it into a hit Sundance film. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aster talks about how a story of grief, that was too dark and bleak to ever get made as a drama, became a hit horror film. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kusmana on the using real guns, creating an unusual villain and pulling Nicole Kidman back from going almost too far in her incredible transformation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Oscar winning director behind "Ida" talks about his extraordinary new film "Cold War." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Black love is a radical act," calling on Jenkins to create to take a bold and different approach to creating Beale Street's visual language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ramsay talks about coming back from the trauma of having been fired from a film she had already made in her head, to make one of the best films of the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What Boots Riley learned from two decades of creating music that made making his first film such a success. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Josephine gets inside her unique multi-year process of creating the dreamy, meta world of "Madeline's Madeline," and how it relates to her new film "Shirley." PHOTO: AP/REX/Shutterstock Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The LA Critics Best Director winner talks about her long process and deep research of making her "social realist" films and the next films she's making. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spike on keeping Oscar season in perspective, film school today, and how the success of "BlacKkKlansman" has led people to reconsider his 40 years of filmmaking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The "Dogtooth" and "Lobster" director talks about his unusual rehearsal process and what drew him to make a period lesbian triangle drama about Queen Anne with screenwriter Tony McNamara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The “12 Years a Slave” director talks about why he never shot lists, the film’s incredible opening sequence, his longtime collaboration with DP Sean Bobbitt, why Chicago is the best city to set a story, and how he identified with the widows in the original BBC series as a 13 year old black kid growing up in London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The "Diary of a Teenage Girl" director on why striving for clarity in films can be a bad thing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

RaMell Ross refused to accepted the limitations of documentaries and black representational space in cinema, so he created something new. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The "Call Me By Your Name" director talks about how Thom Yorke changed his view of film scores, being inspired by the films and youth culture of Berlin 1977, his feminism, and tackling Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks." PHOTO: Andrea Raffin/Shutterstock Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The oscar winning director goes behind the scenes of recreating the moon landing and telling the story of Neil Armstrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kazan and Dano talk about collaborating on Paul’s directorial debut. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices