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NEON releases Santuary in select theaters on May 19th, 2023 before opening wider on May 26th, 2023. NYC MOVIE GURU: As a director, which of the many emotions in Sanctuary was most challenging for you to capture? Zachary Wigon: I don't know. I'd have to mull it over more. I felt really fortunate to have Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott in the movie. They're both so exceptionally talented. When you're working with great actors, there's not a whole lot that you need to do other than to give them their space to do their thing. They just, sort of, got it right from the start. There was never anything on the set where we were trying to get a scene and it wasn't working or to rewrite the scene or to figure out a different way of how to play it. They were on-the-ball all the way through. We never really hit a speed bump like that where we weren't able to capture an emotion and had to divert from the original plan. NYC MOVIE GURU: How did you balance the Sanctuary's lighter and darker elements in the editing room? ZW: It didn't feel particularly challenging because in the script, it all felt earned and logical. The tonal shifts in the script were very exciting. I was very excited to make those atmospheric, hard left turns in the movie. It never really felt like the intense changes and affects were unearned. So, because they always felt logical in the script, the script felt like a stack of dominoes in terms of how it progressed. Because it felt earned in the script, it never really felt like I was reaching cinematically in terms of implementing it. All that you're doing as a director is basically taking what works in a script and translating into a new language which is the cinematic language. One thing that I did find really helpful for switching between affects that I thought was really interesting was what I call these little "drop-down" moments. So, the way that I thought about it was: let's say you're doing a scene that's all about suspense and the suspense atmosphere and you need to toggle from suspense to comedy or comedy back to suspense. I try to think about the intensity of the affect and the atmosphere on a scale of like 1 to 10. If you're at 7 on the suspense scale and need to get to a 5 on the comedy scale, what I found is that you have to drop the intensity down to 1 or 0. If you drop the intensity way, way down, then you can jump anywhere you want. So, dropping the intensity down just meant reducing the visual and sonic stimulation. If you bring things down, you can, kind of, go in any direction. NYC MOVIE GURU: How important is it for you to trust the audience's imagination? ZW: I think that the audience's imagination is everything. I was explaining to somebody the other day that when you're making a movie, as the filmmaker, you're only really doing 50% of the work. The other 50% of the work is done by people who are watching the movie. So, what's so interesting about movies and about all art, I guess, is that you can have two different people who watched the same movie have two completely different experiences. I think that that's a really beautiful thing. That just goes to show you how no two imaginations are the same. So, for me, trusting the audience's imagination is everything. You have to respect the audience enough to let them be your collaborator. You don't want to ever tell them exactly what to think and feel. NYC MOVIE GURU: What was the process like to shoot the wonderful dancing sequence with the song Heaven Must Have Sent You by Bonnie Pointer? Why did you choose that disco song in particular? ZW: I knew that I wanted it to be disco. Why did I want it to be disco? I don't know. Certain things, I think, are intuitive and it's hard for me to understand. Disco just felt right. I was listening to a disco playlist on Spotify and that song came up. I never heard it before and I was just like, "The lyrics and the music--this is just perfect!" So, we went with that. As for how it all worked, the way that I work is I previsualize everything. I know that not all directors are like that. Some directors do their best work when they're coming up with all the shots on the set. I do my best work when everything is previsualized. We used a previsualization program and then the DP, Ludovica Isidori, and I also went to the set while it was being built a number of times and we did previsualization shots on our phones with stand-ins. So, that whole sequence, along with everything else in the movie, I could see it on my phone before we made the actual movie. The whole movie was edited, in a way, before we started shooting. If you can see everything in advance, then you're able to figure out if something is going to work visually. As far as it being a stylistic departure, I guess there's this tension and intensity that's slowly building over the course of the movie up until that point. That sequence is a little before midway through the movie. At that point, I think that the viewer is primed and ready for something a little bit more explosive. At that point, it just felt intuitively like they'd be willing to make that leap and go on that journey with me. NYC MOVIE GURU: Do you think that there's a voyeuristic aspect to watching Sanctuary? ZW: I think that, inherently, cinema is a voyeuristic medium because you, as the audience, are watching people who don't know that they're being watched. That's the central tenet of the art form. What's interesting in your question is that not all movies feel voyeuristic even though, categorically, the art form itself is voyeuristic. So, I think that what your question speaks to is, and I'm happy to hear it, it feels real. In order for a movie to feel voyeuristic, you have to believe that what you're watching is really happening. It's only if you believe that what you're watching is really happening that you feel a little bit like, "Oh gosh! I'm actually spying on the private, intimate moments of these real people. I'm looking at something that I'm not supposed to be looking at!" That's just a testament to Micah Bloomberg's phenomenal screenplay, and Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott are phenomenally talented actors. So, when you're able to have a situation where the emotional lives of these characters are totally plausible to the viewer, I think that's probably what generates this feeling of voyeurism. That's part of the pleasure of the art form. NYC MOVIE GURU: Who's more mature: Rebecca or Hal? ZW: I feel like if I weighed into those sorts of value judgements or editorializing about the characters in that way, my fear is that it starts to encroach on closing off certain avenues of interpretation for the viewer. Like what you were saying about the viewer's imagination, there are certain things that, I think, are better left for the viewer to decide about the significance of the movie and the meaning of the movie and the significance of what's going on psychologically with the characters. What I can say is that, certainly, Rebecca understands Hal better than Hal understands himself. I think that it would be very difficult to argue with that. Beyond that, I hope that different people who watch the movie will come to different conclusions about the psychological states of the characters. NYC MOVIE GURU: How introspective are Rebecca and Hal? How do you capture introspection? ZW: At times, they're introspective, but, I think, at other times, they're very much lacking in introspection. In terms of how you capture introspection, I think that it's a combination of the writing conveying what's going on in a realistic way and, primarily, the performers. The primary work of showing a character in a moment of introspection is done through acting--through the performance. Chris Abbott and Margaret Qualley are so good at what they do that there's not a whole lot, as a director, that you have to do other than to put the camera on them as they're going through those moments. There's something to be said about creating a visual situation that gives the audience a little bit of a peek or a window into what may be happening inside a character's head. There are certain visual things that you can do with camera placement, for example, to give the audience a sense of what the character is thinking or feeling at that time. NYC MOVIE GURU: Do you think that Sanctuary could work as a play? ZW: I think that it could absolutely work as a play. I'm certainly not a theater expert. Film is, really, my medium. In my, sort of, passing knowledge of theater, I think that it absolutely could. NYC MOVIE GURU: What was the process like to decide how aware the audience should be of the camera and how far to go with the visual style? ZW: As far as the camerawork goes, is to be expressing what's going on with the characters through a way that's cinematically interesting, but emphasizing what's already going on in the story. You never want to be flashy or showy or to distract from the focus on the characters and the performances. Everything that you're doing with the camera is in support of that. Sometimes, the affect is a particularly intense one and it requires a little bit more stylistic work camera-wise. Other times, there's very little that's required of you other than just to put the camera on the actor's face and let them do their thing. NYC MOVIE GURU: I think that Sanctuary is poetic and that poetry is often a form of protest. What do you think? ZW: I don't think that it's my place to judge the merit of the movie. That's for others to judge. If people feel like the movie is poetic, I take that as an enormous compliment. When I think about poetry, I think about the way in which the form of poetry can take a detail or a concept or whatever is being described and, sort of, elongate it and emphasize and accentuate it. Something small can become drawn out into something larger and grander with much more nuance. If a movie can do that with moments of real life being, sort of, distended and made larger and dilated, that's a wonderful thing. As far as poetry being a protest, I'm not sure if I totally or consciously, anyway, can make a connection there to the movie. The movie was always, for me, about being a deep dive into these two characters and the fascinating bind that they find themselves in. I just wanted to explore that situation that they were trapped in from every possible angle. Main Page Interviews Menu Alphabetical Menu Chronological Menu ______________________________________________________ |
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