Wildcat cinematographer Steve Cosens, CSC

Cinematographer Steve Cosens, CSC first met actor and director
Ethan Hawke on the movie Born to Be Blue, a biographical
re-imagining of the life of Chet Baker. Ethan played Chet Baker,
and he and Steve connected over their similar film tastes. A few
years later, Hawke called Steve to shoot Blaze, a film he was
directing. Blaze is a semi-biographical imagining of the life of
Texas songwriting legend Blaze Foley. While Ethan Hawke is drawn to
directing films based on real people, the idea to make Wildcat came
from his daughter, actor Maya Hawke, who is a huge fan of Flannery
O'Connor's work. Though Wildcat is based on writer Flannery
O'Connor's life, it also interweaves her short stories into the
plot as she goes through the process of publishing her first novel,
Wise Blood in 1952. Steve was unfamiliar with the writer, so he
read her short stories and was blown away. For that time, it was
unusual for a woman to write darkly humorous and disturbing
stories. Hawke proposed they shoot in Kentucky, and sent Steve
videos of a few location scouts. They both liked the idea of
O'Connor's fictional short stories overlapping into the story of
her real life, weaving together fact and fiction. Both Maya Hawke
and Laura Linney play multiple roles and characters, adding to the
layers of story within story. Steve decided to keep the camera
locked off and more controlled for the sections dealing with
O'Connor's real life. He contrasted that by shooting the fictional
stories handheld. In post, he played a little bit with the contrast
and color of the stories, but the color palette remains a
consistent cool blue and green. Wildcat is a small independent film
with a tight budget, so shooting for the 1950's presented a bit of
a challenge. On location in Kentucky, the production crew needed to
find the right period buildings and houses, and Steve was limited
by what direction he could shoot to keep anything modern out of
frame. They had a script and extensively location scouted, so that
they knew what the shot and light limitations would be. But once
shooting began, Hawke could keep it loose so that the actors were
able to explore more with their characters within the scene. Steve
really enjoys working with Hawke because he's a confident director
who is not afraid to take chances or change the plan if necessary.
As a DP, he finds it freeing, since many directors get locked into
the script or the shotlist, and they can't see that there might be
another way to be creative. Once he graduated art school in
Vancouver, Canada, Steve got his start shooting the music video
backgrounds for karaoke songs that were then sent to Hong Kong. The
job required him to shoot two videos per day, without being able to
scout locations ahead of time. It taught him to be flexible and
adapt to the different locations that they would go. It also taught
him to light quickly and in many different situations. Wildcat
recently premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival
(TIFF) and is seeking distribution. Find Steve Cosens:
https://www.stevecosens.com/ Instagram: @cosenssteve Sponsored by
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