The Cinematography Podcast Episode 100: Iris Ng
As primarily a documentary cinematographer, Iris Ng always asks where the camera should be at a given moment and how is it supposed to behave. She approaches a project asking about the perspective- is it supposed to be deeply personal, from within the lived experience of the person it’s about, or more observational and objective, from the outside looking in?
Quite a few of the documentaries Iris has worked on are deeply personal stories. Her first big feature was on fellow Canadian Sarah Polley’s film, Stories We Tell. The film integrated Sarah’s family home movies, shot on Super 8, into contemporary interviews with Sarah’s family members, and reenactments shot on Super 8 with actors in 70’s and 80’s era costumes. Iris ended up using several Super 8 cameras to shoot with, since the film cartridges are so short and the cameras had to be constantly swapped out and reloaded. Stories We Tell required a great deal of sensitivity as each person told their story of Sarah’s mother, Diane, a charismatic actor with many secrets who passed away in 1990. The documentary was critically acclaimed and received an Oscar nomination.
Iris took a similar approach to the documentary Shirkers. Like Stories We Tell, Shirkers uses personal excavations and film material from the past to examine it for answers. As a teen, writer/director Sandi Tan and her friends had made an indie film in Singapore called Shirkers. Their film teacher disappeared with all the footage once shooting had wrapped, and Sandi wanted to tell the story about tracking down what happened to the film through interviews with friends while going back to retrace the experience. They chose interesting setups and locations for interviews, and Iris would often turn the camera on Sandi to capture her reactions as she was reliving her past.
For the Netflix documentary series Making A Murderer, Iris had a different challenge. Iris came to the project on year nine of filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos’ ten year process of shooting the series, and used her artistic eye to help elevate and add to the the previously shot footage. Each of the two seasons was 10 episodes long, so it was a matter of ensuring that there was enough coverage and angles, such as the exteriors of the Manitowoc County Courthouse for the filmmakers to work with.
Iris Ng is currently shooting more narrative projects, such as the web series Hey Lady on CBC Gem.
Find Iris Ng
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The Winner of Don Coscarelli’s book, True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking is Marcos Segura!
Close Focus: Online film schools, both accredited and non, marketing to aspiring filmmakers. One of the latest is a company called Yellow Brick offering coursework through NYU, though upon completion a “certificate” and not a degree is awarded.
An update: Ben’s experiment with Creation Effects plug-in, Swarms, to create swarms of flies to an episode of the web series, 20 Seconds To Live called “Astaroth” has been quite successful. He’ll have a new version of the episode with the fly swarms ready in a few weeks and we will post it.
Illya’s short end: Vespid prime zoom lenses are extremely compact, lightweight and portable. Available for pre-order at Hot Rod Cameras.
Ben’s short end: Ben is excited to see Mank, directed by David Fincher and shot by Erik Messerschmidt, about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and his battles with Citizen Kane director Orsen Welles. The film is shot entirely in monochrome with a monochrome soundtrack.
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Podcast Credits:
Editor in Chief: Illya Friedman@hotrodcameras
Instagram: @illyafriedman
Ben Rock: Twitter: @neptunesalad
Instagram: @bejamin_rock
Producer: Alana Kode
Editor: Ben Katz
Composer: Kays Alatractchi
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:09 — 101.8MB)
