Every week, we're featuring interviews with the cast and crew of Rooks. This week's spotlight is on cinematographer Sarah Elizabeth Bailey.
Sarah Elizabeth Bailey, the cinematographer for Rooks
Sarah had long dismissed her passion for filmmaking. Choosing to obtain her degree in recreation management and then pursuing a career in that field left little time for making movies on the side. “Cinematography had been a dream I let go of in 2015.”
When director Robert Maynard was building his team, he recalled a brief friendship with Sarah during a class they shared 6 years prior. He reached out to her and asked if she might be willing to be part of the crew. He was fortunate she said yes. And for Sarah, it was an opportunity to explore that dormant interest in filmmaking.
According to Sarah, shooting the film was “a very cool experience. I got to see everything for the first time, and being a part of it all was so rewarding!” Sarah, like so many of the cast and crew, loved filming at the cabin in Sutton, though for her it carries a deeper meaning. Her family owns the property, and it’s thanks to her that production was able to film there. To her, “it was some of the things I love most colliding. I’ve always had a passion for filming and editing, and being able to do that on a real film in the place I grew up was awesome.”
Sarah spent months learning and preparing to shoot Rooks before production even began. She and Robert built out a collection of rigs, tripods, stabilizing arms, and some other equipment to really up the ante on the quality of recordings for Rooks, leveraging FilmicPro and the incredible 4K HDR cameras of the iPhone 13 series for almost every shot of the film.
“I’m excited to see the final sequence all come together,” Sarah added. It’s something production spent two very long nights working on… the first from about 4:00 PM until midnight, and the second a week later, from 6:00 PM until about 4:00 AM. Sarah has seen pieces of this sequence, and we can confirm it is coming together quite nicely!
Sarah’s favorite movie is Saving Private Ryan, and when we asked if she has any projects she wanted to plug, she simply said: “Rooks, word on the street is it’s going to be lit.”
See Sarah’s work in Rooks, premiering at The Strand in Dover, NH, on December 17. On Amazon Instant Video December 23.
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