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I come originally from a cinematography background.  Ever since I moved to Chicago, that's what I've done, both to pay the bills and simply because I love it.  I love crafting lighting that fits a certain mood, choosing lenses to best illustrate a concept visually or to just tell the story in the best way, setting the technical elements of cameras both large and small...it geeks me out.  It's a blessing every day for me, knowing I get to do what I love and get paid for it.

So, naturally, as a director, I've always enjoyed having a measure of control over the image.  But it also begs the question: who should have more control?  As a cinematographer, I always would hate it when directors tried to micro-manage the shots or the lighting, yet as a director, I often find myself sitting over my DP's shoulder, whispering little words like "headroom" or "pan left" or "pull focus" and basically becoming a silly control freak.  It's my movie, after all! 

The answer, really, is that no one person has total control over the image.  I'm the director, sure, but it's not MY movie, after all.  Filmmaking involves extreme collaboration, and in our case, even more so with people you're already comfortable with on set.  When directing my first feature, Happily After, I hired cinematographer Justin Cameron because we had already developed a close working relationship and friendship, and as such had a kind of visual shorthand.  We referenced the same movies, knew the same lenses and cameras, and understood the concepts we were trying to tackle in very much the same way.  Chrysalis screenwriter Ben Kurstin wrote this film partially because he wanted to develop a film on which he could serve as cinematographer, which helped us both because we had also worked together on dozens of sets prior to this; he had served as my gaffer for years, and we had developed that same shorthand of lighting and composition.

That notion of collaboration extends to every element of the visuals.  On the teaser, Ben wrote the script with certain shots in mind, and then in reading the script I drew up a concept that centered around the idea of Penelope's dream, a fever dream that grew in dread and intensity.  We then collaborated on the shot list: shots we knew we wanted, shots that were more loose, shots that were location specific versus shots that we could get anywhere, really.  We discussed whether or not to shoot in a different aspect ratio than the native 16:9 HD of the Canon 5D MkIII, and ultimately settled on a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio, to add to the epic feel of the film.  We decided on a certain color palette, a blue-gray tint and a bleached-out green look that would best evoke a post-apocalyptic landscape.  We wanted almost no handheld work, but instead a lot of linear design highlighting the architecture of urban decay.  And many of these concepts will make it into the finished film!

Because of our time constraints - and my relative inability to draw! - we didn't storyboard the teaser, though when we're in pre-production on Chrysalis, we plan to hire a storyboard artist or graphic designer to not only help us plan specific shots but to flesh out concepts with our production designer Megan McDonough.  It's always important to me as a director to essentially make the film in pre-production, to decide on themes and arcs and visual styles and shots early.  That way, then, if you run into big problems at a specific location or you don't have enough time to do what you planned, everything can still come back to, "How does this best serve the story, and how can we work within our limitations to do that?" Sometimes one shot will work when we had planned on four, and as long as the intensity of the scene is still there, all the better!

Visual creation doesn't end on set, either.  Editor Mike Molenda has suggested having another camera operator on set whose job is solely to capture b-roll of dilapidated buildings, wire, rocks, broken glass...any sort of threatening image.  It's a way in the editing room of further fracturing the world of the film and calling attention to a simple truth: everything in this world is dangerous.  Drawing blood means death.  And anywhere you walk, you had better watch your step.

I guess my point is that, at the end of the day, you need to surround yourself with not only incredibly talented people, but also people you can trust.  People you can trust to be honest with you when an idea doesn't work.  People who will contribute equally off-the-wall ideas.  People who thrive on collaboration, on throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, on adhering to a concept even - and especially - when limitations may challenge us. 

Collaboration is what makes our industry move.  And, on Chrysalis, it will make our film come alive.

~Update by John Klein, director of Chrysalis