IndieWire's Filmmaker Toolkit

Director Shaunak Sen goes inside how he found and created the most innovative visual language of any film this year. A process that involved throwing away a year’s worth of footage, and starting over, all in an effort the avoid to pitfalls that so many films with touch upon ecological or political issues fall into.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Sara Dosa and producer Shane Boris join Filmmaker Toolkit to discuss the formal and tonal choices they made in order to capture the adventurous spirits of Katia and Maurice Krafft in "Fire of Love."  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Film scholar and public radio fixture Elvis Mitchell speaks about directing "Is That Black Enough for You?!?" and why the 1970s were the greatest decade ever for Black film. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Directors Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes join Toolkit discuss the creative pillars holding up their documentary "The Janes," why it was important to make Chicago a character in the story, the extensive challenge and surprising finds of using archive material from the period, and their and the film's relationship to the modern politics of abortion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, Field talks about how he turned his unusual script about a famous conductor in personal and professional free fall into a riveting character study, with help from star Cate Blanchett, collaborating during the height of the pandemic, thematic ideas like the corrupting nature of power and practical concerns like casting the other parts, and both Field's and Blanchett's delight in sharing their growing excitement about the milieu in which the film takes place. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"DIG!" and "We Live in Public" director Ondi Timoner joins Toolkit to discuss the unintentional road to "Last Flight Home" and the work of making the cameras that documented her father's last days as invisible as possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In James Gray's new film "Armageddon Time," he returns to the kind of intimate, precise character study with which he made his name. Gray speaks about visual style, memory, and why he loves movies to begin with. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Margaret Brown discusses the cinematic and narrative choices that helped shape the story of "Descendant" – from building the sounds of the South to collaborating with the film's subjects to resurfacing the filmmaking of Zora Neale Hurston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charlotte Wells joins the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast to talk about the evolution of her first feature: creating anchor points for memory within the story of the film, the joys of working with DV camcoder footage and the liminal place it sits between objective and subjective points of view, refining perspective and the sense of memory in editing "Aftersun" together, finding immediacy within a specific time period through the look of the film, and even more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Series creator Armando Iannucci discusses the benefits of satire while working in genre, building a future out of our ridiculous present, and how the pandemic influenced the HBO comedy's second season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices