Filmmaking Focus

Brooklyn director Dawn Scibilia has just produced her first feature film, Home. Dawn describes it as a “poetic documentary about New York from the perspective of a young Irish immigrant, Alan Cook.”

“Home is really an experimental doc that was made in a very organic way,” Dawn told us. “Alan would write some voice over narration based on his experiences here in New York and email it to me. I would then go out alone with the camera and try to visualize it. Sometimes we would go out together, just walking the streets of New York, waiting for interesting moments to capture on tape that spoke to what was being said in the film. Without any connections or studio financing Alan and I were able to get a lot of major stars involved in the film. There are candid interviews with Mike Myers, Liam Neeson, Woody Allen, Susan Sarandon, Alfred Molina, Rosie Perez, Colin Quinn, Vinny Vella, Frank and Malachy McCourt, Pete Hamill and Fran Lebowitz. We found out ways of getting to these people in person and pitching our idea. They were all very excited to do it. Before that, we had tried going through their agents and that didn’t work at all. It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you are very determined. Here we were, two people who are unknowns, no money, no crew and we have a star studded cast! Now we are looking for distribution.”

Dawn’s commitment to the visual look of the film, as well as her meager budget, affected the shooting schedule. Home was “shot primarily in exterior locations that had to have a sort of magical light to fit the story of the film. Having had no budget to speak of meant me waiting around for that magical natural light. Sometimes a week or two would go by without shooting, because of weather or just having the luxury of being able to wait around for the right light, the perfect sunset shot.

“Alan wrote, narrated and is featured in it. I co-produced, directed, shot it and edited it on Mini DV with the Sony TRV900, although you’d find it hard to believe,” explains Dawn, “I think Home is a testament to the fact that you don’t have to have the latest camera to make a good looking film. Although right now I still feel film is stronger than video. But there is a freedom with video that you can’t have with film. There’s a trade off. You lose picture quality in exchange for a lot of freedom. Look at the results at homethemovie.com. or youtube.com/homethemovie. Bear in mind they are compressed so there is a lot of picture quality lost when viewing it on the web. But you get the idea.”

In conclusion we asked Dawn what advice she would give to aspiring filmmakers as well as what books have been particularly useful to her. Some of the books she mentioned include The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters by Karl Iglesias; Story by Robert McKee; Sense of Direction by William Ball; Directing Actors by Judith Weston; Film Directing Shot by Shot by Steven D Katz; and Painting with Light by John Alton. As for advice she says “Don’t give up. There are more opportunities now than ever before. Tell better stories. Explore storytelling with cinema, there is so much more we can do.”

Home has been chosen as a selection for “Independents Night,” a project of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and IFP, and will be showing at the Walter Reade Theatre in New York City on October 26th, 2006.