“WELL GROOMED is about the world of competitive creative dog grooming and the women who groom their poodles into fantastic technicolor sculptures. It is an escape from the everyday stress into the passion of a niche community of women spending quality time with their animals.”
Congratulations on WELL GROOMED playing at SxSW this year! Is your first time here and are you planning to attend your screenings?
This will be my first year at SXSW and I’ll be at every screening of the film! I couldn’t miss watching the audience watch the movie for the first time. More importantly though, the women and the dogs in the film will be at the premiere and the Monday night showing of the film, so if you want to meet one of the dogs in person you should come out!
So how did you get into this movie-making business? Talk to me a bit about how you got your start and what you have worked on in the past.
I got into the movie business more by accident than anything else; I had always assumed I would get a desk job of some kind but instead I moved to New York, got a job with a documentary filmmaker and got passionate about the work. Since moving to New York, I have been completely focused on documentary film, both the making of and marketing around and have mainly been producing films including TRE MAISON DASAN (on Independent Lens April 1st!) and NETIZENS. WELL GROOMED is my first feature as a director and I’m pretty excited.
How did this project come together for you? Give me a rundown from the preparation, to shooting, to post-production to now!
I started researching for WELL GROOMED in 2014 with a trip to Tompkins Square Park’s annual dog Halloween fashion show. I was looking for a way to combine my love of animals and documentary film and continued to research dog culture and the people passionate about animals. Doing that, I quickly found out about creative dog grooming and decided to dive in immediately. Over 2015, I traveled around the country to make my short film (also titled WELL GROOMED).
The feature production started in 2017, with our partnership with our co-producer, Spacestation. Filming WELL GROOMED actually happened very quickly because I wanted to keep the film’s action within one competition year. We shot close to 40 days and roughly 250 hours of footage between April and November 2017. The edit started in October of 2017, and all the time we saved in production went straight into the editing room. Active editing went from October 2017 through August 2018, with a four-ish month break in the middle for our editor, Katharina Stroh, and myself to work on other projects. I also started working with Dan Deacon, the film’s genius composer in February 2018, and we worked on setting tone and laying in the tracks for the film until August 2018.
What keeps you going while making a movie? What drives you?
Whiskey and Project Runway. And taking very long walks with my Australian Cattle Dog/Basenji mutt around Brooklyn.
What was your biggest challenge with this project, and the moment that was the most rewarding to you?
One car trip in particular stands out to me which was the drive to the final competition at Hershey. We’d been moving so quickly, and spending so much time with the women that weekend, since it was the big one, that it was the first time I could pause for a moment and talk with Alexander Lewis, our Director of Photography, about how we would block out the filming of the final competition. We spent a good 30 minutes discussing exactly how it would go, getting me comfortable with the angles he thought would be best, trading suggestions, and timing everything out only to have him completely move the camera at the very last moment during the competition. Terrifying. His instincts were spot on; all that planning and if he hadn’t moved fast we wouldn’t have gotten the shot that became one of the most important and rewarding in the film.
I’m about to get technical, but I would love to know about the the visual design of the movie; what camera did you film with, your relationship to the director of photography and how the movie was photographed.
We used the FS7 throughout shooting because it was lightweight and easily built up or down. Much to the annoyance of the camera crew, I have an aversion to tons of gear, so we kept everything almost too light. We filmed in very small places like vans, small back rooms, and homes with many dogs around so we knew the gear had to be flexible. At Alexander’s suggestion, we used a vintage Canon 11.5-138mm Lens that allowed us to zoom closely into fur and eyes, and get the shots we wanted at competitions without spooking the dogs we were filming with by getting too close to them. As mentioned in the film, some dogs are much more comfortable with attention than others and we wanted to make sure we could film with all of them no matter their comfort level. We also spent hours thinking about how we could create a visual language even as we were filming non-interview scenes and kept up a constant dialogue about shots while on set.
What are you looking forward to the most about showing your movie here in Austin?
The premiere! We’re going to have three of the women featured in the film there and many of their dogs; I’m excited for the reactions of people at the premiere, after they have seen the movie, when the dogs walk out on stage. It’s going to be something to remember.
After the film screens at SxSW, where is the film going to show next? Theatrical, online, more festivals?
After SXSW, WELL GROOMED has quite a festival tour. Only Cleveland Film Festival is announced, but we’ll be shouting about more very soon on our Facebook page.
If you could show your movie in any theatre outside of Austin, where would you screen it and why?
I’m most excited to bring the film to where the women live and work, to show their friends and family. I showed the film to them before the premiere so they could know exactly what was included before seeing it with 200 other people and, when it was just them and me in a room, it was like watching an incredibly stylized home movie. I’d be excited to see that on a grander scale once their entire families can come see it!
What would you say to someone who was being disruptive, like talking or texting, during a movie?
I mean, this happens all the time. I can barely show the trailer to someone these days without them talking halfway through it. And I’m a chatterbox as well, but I think it’s an effect of our shrunken ability to pay attention. If someone is being very disruptive, I’d suggest that they see the movie some other time.
We have a lot of readers on our site looking to make movies or get into the industry somehow. What is the ONE THING you would say to someone who is wanting to get into the filmmaking business?
I’d say you cannot escape producing and you shouldn’t try. Being able to accurately, quickly, and succinctly answer emails is the talent required of our day and age, and it doesn’t matter how creative you are unless you can do this. Plus, you make friends that way.
And final question: what is the greatest movie you have ever seen at a film festival?
The greatest movie I’ve seen at a festival recently was YELLOW IS FORBIDDEN by Pietra Brettkelly. It’s about the Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei, and I absolutely loved the film. I can never decide on a favorite movie overall and there are too many good ones to lock myself into one answer to that!
This is one of the many film titles playing at SxSW 2019. For more information on this and any other title playing in the festival, point your browser to http://www.sxsw.com/film!