If you haven't seen the film yet, "Woman of the Hour" is Anna Kendrick's directorial debut, where she also stars as Sheryl, a woman who was on the popular TV show The Dating Game, as a way to put herself out there on TV and break into the entertainment world. But one of the bachelors that she was testing was actually Rodney Alcala, a serial killer who was at the height of his crimes at the time.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00I was really blown away by all of your very deliberate shots and cutaways and reactions that work to build tension.
00:08The work you did with your DP, Zach Kupferstein, stands out because every single shot conveys an emotion, whether it's fear or trepidation or embarrassment.
00:19Zach was incredible and so organized, but I spoke to him early on about the way that I hoped to use reflection and distortion in key moments.
00:33A woman through a camera lens or through a mirror or a car window in moments when she's being really missed as a whole person, in moments where she's being looked at but not seen.
00:46Because it's tricky to put that across in a film without using a kind of established visual language of the way that a predator might view a woman.
00:59If I use his literal perspective, am I contributing to a normalization of women being objectified on film?
01:08And it was just tricky and so that was, you know, a way that I wanted to attempt that.
01:15And then, you know, you sort of add in these moments with performance where, for example, Tony Hale's character, like, seemingly won't look at me and will only look at me through the mirror and I keep trying to get him to actually just look at me.
01:28And that, I thought, created some fun performance moments and I'll say that, you know, getting certain things across to the audience, look, I'm biased because this is what I've devoted my life to for, you know, since I was 12.
01:45But I always think that performance is king.
01:50To me, like, the whole reason that movies exist is as a vehicle for great actors to give great performances.
01:57And I love that every department in the movie thinks a movie is a vehicle for great production design or a great costume design or a great cinematography, which is exactly as it should be.
02:07Um, of course, I'm the one that's right, but, um, sorry, I think that's good.
02:15That's good, I'm into that.
02:16There were certain visual things that, um, that felt important to me.
02:26Um, you know, I remember when I was pitching myself, I think I talked about the parking lot sequence at the end and how I could imagine this frame where, you know, you kind of see Cheryl and Rodney and it's, you know, the expanse of the isolation that they're in in that moment.
02:45And knowing that even if Cheryl ran for it, she wouldn't even make it out of the frame before Rodney was on top of her, you know, um, and really giving you that visceral sense of the kind of physical danger that she's in, you know, then on the other hand, I think about, um, the tiki bar.
03:03And while there were, you know, very specific visual and production design things that, that felt important in that scene, I changed that, some of that scene, like the night before we shot it to, to just make it, um, like significantly more subtle.
03:18Subtle. And I think if you read that scene on paper, it would sort of feel like a scene where nothing happens. And I was really, really trusting that, um, Daniel Zavato, who is extraordinary in the movie and I would be able to make something happen that felt really grounded, but also really, really real and present.
03:40Excuse me, man. Can you give us another round?