Female filmmakers are front and center this week on BEHIND THE LENS thanks to writer/director ROXANNE BENJAMIN and director ROXANN DAWSON.
First up is our exclusive pre-recorded interview with director ROXANN DAWSON who makes her feature directorial debut with BREAKTHROUGH. Based on the true story of 14-year old John Smith who, on January 19, 2015, fell through the ice of Lake St. Louis, and was clinically dead for almost an hour. With no CPR for 27 minutes and no pulse for 45 minutes, the emergency medical team delivered the worst possible news to John’s mother, Joyce. But as any mother knows, you don’t give up on your child. Calling on her immense faith, Joyce prayed for John to “come back to life” and be healed. Miraculously, he started breathing. Adapted for the screen by screenwriter Grant Nieporte from the bestselling book “The Impossible” by Joyce Smith, take a listen as Roxann talks about what compelled her to tell this story and why she chose it as her directorial feature debut, working with producer Devon Franklin (“Miracles from Heaven”, “Heaven Is For Real”), the challenges and concerns of making a faith-based film (how about counting the number of times “God” is said or deciding how many crosses to show), working with the natural elements of ice and snow and how it affects the shooting schedule, developing a visual tonal bandwidth and her work with cinematographer Zoran Popovic, underwater filming, perfect casting, scoring, and more!
Then writer/director ROXANNE BENJAMIN joins us live talking about her sophomore feature, BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK. A thriller with a spiritual or supernatural touch to it, Roxanne takes on a journey into the mountains through the eyes of inexperienced older teenage trail guide Wendy who gets lost in the night. . .along with a dead body. Calling on her own life and love of nature and hiking, take a listen as Roxanne talks about developing the story concept and translating that into a workable film construction, location scouting, character development and the importance of isolation to the story, the challenges of shooting in the mountains of Idyllwild and during a bout of severe California wildfires in 2017, working with a live bear versus CGI, sound design, and more. Also notable is our discussion on Roxanne’s choices for a strong female-led crew with cinematographer Hannah Getz (who delivers some outstanding work here with night shoots), production designers Courtney Andujar and Hillary Andujar, and editor Courtney Marcilliat.
