8Sure to be a crowd-pleaser amongst filmmakers, Black Bear is a story of a director who blurs the line between art and reality. The protagonist, played by Aubrey Plaza, draws the audience into her search for creative revitalization, which she pursues through the real-life manipulation of a married couple hosting her at a remote lake house in the Adirondacks. Black Bear is one of ten films in the Sundance Film Festival’s NEXT Category. Below is our interview with the movie’s cinematographer, Rob Leitzell. Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott appear in Black Bear. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Rob Leitzell. Name: Robert Leitzell Film: Black Bear (dir.Lawrence Michael Levine) Competition Category: NEXT Camera Body: Arri Alexa Mini Lenses: Cooke Speed Panchro cinema5D: Where did your connection to cameras start? RL: My dad was an avid amateur photographer and shot thousands of slides when he traveled for work. He let me use his camera when I was a kid, eventually bought me my own. I kept shooting until college, but I was almost entirely self-taught from Ansel Adams’s books. Learning darkroom printing from my dad’s system was a years-long obsession. cinema5D: So you were artistically inclined from early on then? RL: As a kid who wanted to be an artist but didn’t show much talent in drawing or painting, I learned to work with my hands: learning carpentry and construction for my school theater. By the time I was in college, I was drafting and designing stage sets. That led me to a job helping...
Published By: CineD - Saturday, 25 January, 2020