Welcome back to Stage & Screen! In this episode, we talk with Sarah Hennigan, Assistant Professor of Film Production, about her work as a filmmaker and her remarkable career thus far.
For more information about Sarah Hennigan, check her out on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3007092/
Here's a link to Sarah's color project for The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/almondboard-2020/almond-farmers-are-preparing-warmer-world/3514/
Also, in the conversation Sarah references an artist she worked with on a music video. Here's a link: https://www.donttouchproductions.com/
As ever: The Department of Theatre & Film is grateful for its patrons and corporate sponsors. As a department we are committed to the high quality instruction that our students receive. Investing in the students’ education and these quality productions helps us move toward our common goal of graduating successful, creative adults who are lifelong learners. If you are interested in contributing to these efforts, please visit https://umfoundation.givingfuel.com/theatreandfilm.
From the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of Mississippi. This is stage and screen.
00:00:16 Katherine Stewart
Hello, hello and welcome back to stage and screen. I'm your host, Kathryn Stewart. And in this episode we're talking with Sarah Hannigan. She is an assistant professor of film production and joined our Department a couple of years ago to be part of our new BFA Film Production program.
00:00:33 Katherine Stewart
She's a young filmmaker who's already achieved a lot in her career. We'll talk about that and many other things here, so stay tuned.
00:00:42 Sarah Hennigan
Hello Sarah, hello, thank you for having me.
00:00:46 Katherine Stewart
Thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
00:00:51 Katherine Stewart
So why don't you just to get us started? Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you got into filmmaking.
00:00:57 Sarah Hennigan
Sure, so um, I actually kind of grew up around the business. Both of my parents are actors. Wow, my mom has been retired from acting for quite awhile and my dad primarily does voice work now, but when I was little they were primarily stage actors.
00:01:18 Sarah Hennigan
And so I grew up.
00:01:20 Sarah Hennigan
Following them around all over the country, I grew up in a lot of different places in America. Following the the plays that they were doing and then about when I was somewhere in between like 910 that that time in my life we moved to Los Angeles and they started doing more film and television work. And so that's how I kind of got introduced to what the world is.
00:01:43 Sarah Hennigan
Of filmmaking.
00:01:45 Sarah Hennigan
But all throughout high school and college I was primarily an actor as well, so I was on stage most of the time an then.
00:01:55 Sarah Hennigan
Thinking when I went into college, I thought I was going to be.
00:01:59 Sarah Hennigan
Either a theater major or a.
00:02:01 Sarah Hennigan
Anthropology major or both. And then I took one film class an I went Oh no that's where I'm supposed to be.
00:02:13 Sarah Hennigan
And yeah, so it was about halfway through college. The first time I ended up behind the camera.
00:02:19 Sarah Hennigan
And then was lucky enough to study abroad at a couple of different places, making movies. And yeah, never went back from there.
00:02:27 Katherine Stewart
So you knew pretty early on that you wanted to be a filmmaker.
00:02:32 Sarah Hennigan
Pretty early, yeah?
00:02:34 Katherine Stewart
And were there certain things that attracted you to that?
00:02:38 Sarah Hennigan
I think I've always been a storyteller. I think that's a. It's a really vital parts of my family and my culture.
00:02:46 Sarah Hennigan
And so that was really never in question. I was, you know, writing poetry and short fiction. By the time I was like 6 years old. So I I knew that that was always going to be a part of my life and it wasn't like I said, until I was kind of actively engaged in academia and thinking critically about the world around me, that I kind of realized that.
00:03:06 Sarah Hennigan
Media was the form of storytelling that I was.
00:03:10 Sarah Hennigan
Most comfortable with and kind of the most well versed an. Therefore the most excited to continue exploring.
00:03:18 Katherine Stewart
Within filmmaking you do a lot of different things. What are your areas of specialization or certain things you really love to do?
00:03:28 Sarah Hennigan
Yeah, so I am a writer and director, but
00:03:34 Sarah Hennigan
Writing and directing. For me #1. They're kind of intrinsically linked I I don't really direct other people's work much. Not that I can't or don't, but not very often. So most of the time, if I'm going to write and direct something, it takes like a very large chunk of my energy and time, and so that it's a slower process for me.
00:03:54 Sarah Hennigan
So I kind of don't do that as often as other parts of the business, but I do love doing it. And then most of the time I am behind the camera, so I'm primarily a cinematographer.
00:04:09 Sarah Hennigan
And through cinematography I learned how to do color correction because you know, the two are intrinsically linked, obviously, and the world of digital filmmaking is just making that more and more complicated, and so you know to kind of learn how to be a better cinematographer, learn how to do color, and then found out I really like doing it.
00:04:30 Sarah Hennigan
So I do that a lot now as well, especially for small independent projects. I really like working kind of directly with cinematographers and directors to figure out what they want their film to end up looking like.
00:04:47 Katherine Stewart
So I think that ties into something you've done recently, right? The project for Theatlantic tell us a little bit about that.
00:04:55 Sarah Hennigan
Yeah, a very good friend of mine has been working on this, basically short documentary that was sponsored by the California Board of Almond Growers I believe is what they call themselves. I may have messed the words up a little bit there, but basically the almond farmers in California.
00:05:18 Sarah Hennigan
And so they made this documentary about a sustainable new way of growing almonds in California, and then that short documentary was used as a sponsorship for the Atlantic. And so it's it's an interesting new form of advertising, basically where.
00:05:38 Sarah Hennigan
A short documentary about a business is taking the place of a traditional advertisement on the Atlantic website.
00:05:46 Katherine Stewart
So what was your role in that project?
00:05:50 Sarah Hennigan
I was just the colorist, so I was I came on right at the end of the project. So basically after everything was put together and shots, I spent a couple of days.
00:06:01 Sarah Hennigan
With the the director of photography trying to figure out the finished look of it.
00:06:08 Katherine Stewart
And what about some films you've written and or directed yourself? Can you talk about those?
00:06:17 Sarah Hennigan
Sure, so the last sort of big project that's out in the world that I wrote and directed is a short film called Light, and it's been awhile now that was.
00:06:30 Sarah Hennigan
Completed in December of 2016.
00:06:35 Sarah Hennigan
And it is.
00:06:37 Sarah Hennigan
A retelling of a Cherokee origin story.
00:06:43 Sarah Hennigan
And which I.
00:06:44 Sarah Hennigan
That was the goal going into the project, I knew that I wanted to do an adaptation of an origin story and.
00:06:52 Sarah Hennigan
It's a sci-fi thriller, so it doesn't seem necessarily on its face like those things would go together, but I cut. I love living in in the world of genre filmmaking, and I wanted to essentially re imagine what this sort of story that.
00:07:13 Sarah Hennigan
Originally is about bringing light and life to the planet. How that could be retold in today's world where maybe the opposite is happening, and so it's essentially a short sci-fi about people trying to save.
00:07:29 Sarah Hennigan
The planet from dying.
00:07:31 Sarah Hennigan
Um?
00:07:32 Sarah Hennigan
And yeah, it's it took a couple of years for it to kind of find its place in the world, but I was very lucky that it eventually did primarily among.
00:07:43 Sarah Hennigan
Festivals and workshops that like to speak about indigenous issues, which is fantastic.
00:07:50 Katherine Stewart
You are a Native American filmmaker.
00:07:54 Katherine Stewart
How does your heritage play into the type of storytelling you want to do or the filmmaking you do?
00:08:01 Sarah Hennigan
Yeah, I think it's a huge part of what I do. I am.
00:08:06 Sarah Hennigan
Basically biracial I'm Irish and Cherokee by culture.
00:08:13 Sarah Hennigan
You know, I'm also American, so there's other things that complicate that, but I was mostly raised with those two cultures. Kind of at the forefront.
00:08:23 Sarah Hennigan
And so the the play between culture and the idea of how one expresses culture has just always been a part of my life. By necessity. You know, being in different circles, especially growing up in different places around America, where sometimes I was more or less of a minority.
00:08:41 Sarah Hennigan
That's always been something that's really important to me, and particularly, you know, as I I also minored in Native American studies as an undergraduate. And so I got to learn more about the world of Native Americans in academia there as well, and so the idea of.
00:08:58 Sarah Hennigan
Representation.
00:09:00 Sarah Hennigan
Of and by native peoples and primarily western media is super important to me, both as an activist and as a filmmaker. And so most of the things that I write and direct are centered around that in some way.
00:09:17 Sarah Hennigan
They're not necessarily all like 1 issue films or anything like that, but.
00:09:25 Sarah Hennigan
They do.
00:09:26 Sarah Hennigan
Pretty much always have to do with how culture and arts intersect somehow.
00:09:35 Katherine Stewart
And last year you were invited to NZ to screen your short film light at the Marriland Film Festival, which is.
00:09:46 Katherine Stewart
Among the few native focused film festivals in the world.
00:09:53 Katherine Stewart
Yep, what was that experience like?
00:09:56 Sarah Hennigan
It was incredible. Shout out to the people who run Modeland are incredible. They they are one of the largest native festivals in the world. They do partner with imaginative here in America who works is a subset of some dance and so.
00:10:15 Sarah Hennigan
That connection was already very strong, so there are often a lot of American native film makers at Maryland.
00:10:23 Sarah Hennigan
But it's not just native New Zealanders and Native Americans. There are native peoples from the entire world, and so that for me, was the truly unique experience. I've literally in no other circumstance, been able to be around so many indigenous film makers that once from incredibly different perspectives, I mean.
00:10:44 Sarah Hennigan
Fiji to the Sami. People of the Arctic too. Like very, very diverse group of people. But you can see that you know there is a sort of. There's a reason why we have this connector of calling ourselves indigenous or native.
00:11:00 Sarah Hennigan
Um, because there are themes that kind of recur across the art of kind of all of these people have been colonized by European nations, basically.
00:11:12 Katherine Stewart
Wow, what are some of those themes?
00:11:16 Sarah Hennigan
Yeah, a lot of them have to do with what we're just talking about about like culture, the expression of culture, a lot of them have to do with environmental activism. Indigenous peoples are very generally very connected to the the lands that they are indigenous to, and especially when that land is being.
00:11:36 Sarah Hennigan
Eroded either through gentrification or through climate change, so that was a very big part of the festival.
00:11:44 Sarah Hennigan
As well as other things like family ties and.
00:11:50 Sarah Hennigan
How blood and culture intersect? If if they have to and sort of questions like that?
00:11:58 Katherine Stewart
So you talked a little bit about it before, but could you tell us more about your film light that you took to the festival?
00:12:05
Sure.
00:12:06 Sarah Hennigan
So it basically is about a young woman.
00:12:12 Sarah Hennigan
Who?
00:12:14 Sarah Hennigan
Doesn't fit in with the the group that she's around, but she nonetheless finds herself in this military compound.
00:12:22 Sarah Hennigan
Amongst a group of basically researchers who are trying to figure out how to save the planet because slowly.
00:12:30 Sarah Hennigan
And slowly due to climate change there is less light every day. The sun is not powering the planets to the extent that it should do, and as a result everything is dying.
00:12:42 Sarah Hennigan
And so, this group of researchers is trying to figure out how how to stop that, or at least how to survive.
00:12:48 Sarah Hennigan
And so it's about this young woman who clearly does not fit in with them culturally, but doesn't want humanity to die either. And so she joins them. Sort of on this mission, and it's about her Anna partner, who are tasked to go out.
00:13:06 Sarah Hennigan
Um, as far as they can into the Woods and to try to find a special plants that they have heard of.
00:13:14 Sarah Hennigan
And when she gets out there, she finds more than what you bargained for.
00:13:21 Sarah Hennigan
Yes.
00:13:22 Katherine Stewart
And you and I have talked before about the possibility of that short film becoming something more.
00:13:29 Sarah Hennigan
Yeah, I always sort of imagined it as almost like a pilot episode. Yeah, of a series. It really is just about the like beginning of the journey of both of this young woman and the relationship between the people who are alive in whatever is out there.
00:13:48 Sarah Hennigan
In the darkness killing people.
00:13:51 Sarah Hennigan
So yeah, it's
00:13:53 Sarah Hennigan
There hasn't been much movement towards production of the rest of it, but I do have sort of an outline for what the whole story arc is.
00:14:06 Katherine Stewart
So you created that sort of with the future in mind, right? It wasn't a contained story in itself. It could go on.
00:14:16 Sarah Hennigan
Definitely, and I think it's part of the nature of the film. One of the things I wanted to talk about that's very important to Cherokee culture is the sort of cyclical nature of storytelling and that.
00:14:28 Sarah Hennigan
The same story can have multiple meanings depending on when you hear it and how it's relevant to the particular time of the audience, and so to the same extent.
00:14:40 Sarah Hennigan
There are a lot of stories that I think are repeating themselves within that world.
00:14:45 Katherine Stewart
What are some other stories that are repeating themselves in that world?
00:14:50 Sarah Hennigan
I think in in that world in particular, one of the things I wanted to.
00:14:57 Sarah Hennigan
To really start to unravel is this idea of othering and how we seem to do this on basically a cyclical timeline of.
00:15:09 Sarah Hennigan
You know a group.
00:15:10 Sarah Hennigan
Kind of coming together over a common interest or goal, or culture or anything, and then overtime within itself othering part of itself and then that cycle starts over and over again, and so this idea of you know there can be a loss of culture.
00:15:27 Sarah Hennigan
Simply through that process of one group of people othering a part of itself, and then they get forced out and lose a sense of connection, and so the idea is, you know, in this world that's happened to literally everybody.
00:15:43 Sarah Hennigan
And so humanity's culture looks kind of not much like what we would recognize.
00:15:50 Katherine Stewart
And you feel that your culture expresses this in a certain way, maybe.
00:15:56 Sarah Hennigan
I think so. I think largely due to the fact that our culture was so close to being lost. Yeah, and there's obviously aspects of it that were lost and won't be recovered. You know, I'm lucky enough to be a member of a tribe.
00:16:13 Sarah Hennigan
Who was relatively powerful?
00:16:17 Sarah Hennigan
During colonization and has had the resources to do things like create.
00:16:23 Sarah Hennigan
Language schools so that the language doesn't disappear and things like that, but that's not the case for a lot of what happened in North America. And so I think because of that sort of acutely aware of that line between.
00:16:37 Sarah Hennigan
Cultural continuance and not.
00:16:41 Katherine Stewart
Have you looked much into that in Mississippi?
00:16:44 Sarah Hennigan
Yeah, I've made.
00:16:45 Sarah Hennigan
A few connections I have not yet really had the opportunity to meet with the tribes of Mississippi. Yeah, but I I have started some work like at the University. I'm a member of the Native American Working Faculty Group and and those, yeah, it's a it's a group of faculty members who are all.
00:17:08 Sarah Hennigan
Interested in.
00:17:09 Sarah Hennigan
Native American studies or cultural appreciation or any sort of like connection like that, which has been really great because there, you know, faculty members from all different disciplines. Working to sort of raise native voices and issues at the University level, and through that I've met some people who are doing some other work with native groups in Mississippi.
00:17:32 Sarah Hennigan
Nothing concrete I can talk about yet.
00:17:35 Katherine Stewart
That's great though.
00:17:37 Katherine Stewart
An in terms of what you're doing for the University, what are you teaching and what will you be teaching next semester?
00:17:44 Sarah Hennigan
Yeah, so I teach primarily cinematography and postproduction classes. Next semester in particular, I will be teaching advanced editing and sound design.
00:17:57 Sarah Hennigan
Um, yeah, they're both pretty fun classes.
00:18:02 Katherine Stewart
And what about some other creative projects you're working on or have coming up in the future?
00:18:08 Sarah Hennigan
Yeah, so I did shoot, direct and shoot a.
00:18:17 Sarah Hennigan
Short music video right before the Covid lockdown.
00:18:23 Sarah Hennigan
So because of that, obviously the post production schedule has been stretched out a lot compared to what we expected, but yeah, so that hopefully will be coming up not too long from now, but it was a lot of fun. It was. This is the first music video I've directed.
00:18:41 Sarah Hennigan
Um and I collaborated with my brother, who is a composer, to write the music. So he did the music and I did the lyrics. And then we collaborated with a very good friend of mine who is a performer out of Austin, Texas, who has a similar.
00:19:02 Sarah Hennigan
Cultural identity in that she is Haitian, American and but not all of her family is Asian and so she deals with this idea of like.
00:19:14 Sarah Hennigan
What culture means within her community? And so we wrote a song about that for her to say, so hopefully that will be out relatively soon.
00:19:24 Katherine Stewart
Can you say the artist name?
00:19:27 Sarah Hennigan
Yeah yeah, absolutely. Her name is Asha X Ray.
00:19:31 Sarah Hennigan
And yeah, absolutely check out her work. You can find it I believe. Let me double check this so I don't say the wrong thing, but it's at, yeah.
00:19:41 Sarah Hennigan
Um, she is also a filmmaker that I collaborate with a lot. So cool she is fantastic. Yeah. And so her website isdonttouchproductions.com all one word. No apostrophe, obviously.
00:19:56 Sarah Hennigan
Yeah, and her that's her production company and their focus is on creating stories by and for women of color. So something I'm obviously very passionate about. So I love working with her.
00:20:13 Sarah Hennigan
Um, another production that I did with don't touch actually is.
00:20:19 Sarah Hennigan
Hopefully right at the end of post.
00:20:20 Sarah Hennigan
Production right now, so that should be out relatively soon as well.
00:20:24 Katherine Stewart
And what was that?
00:20:25 Sarah Hennigan
It's called black gold.
00:20:27 Sarah Hennigan
Aja wrote and directed that one.
00:20:30 Sarah Hennigan
And yeah, it's about it's a comedy about a.
00:20:36 Sarah Hennigan
Woman whose mother has just passed and she has inherited a.
00:20:43 Sarah Hennigan
Business, which is a pawn shop and is trying to sell it in order to move on with her life. And so it's about kind of that process of what the Community feels like if she wants to sell it and how that that will tie into the rest of her life.
00:21:00 Katherine Stewart
Wow, you are.
00:21:01 Katherine Stewart
You really have a lot of projects.
00:21:05 Sarah Hennigan
I kind of feel like that's what being a you know, being a filmmaker is these days is especially because like I said, I don't.
00:21:14 Sarah Hennigan
Because I do work in multiple areas of filmmaking because writing and directing for me is such a long process.
00:21:22 Sarah Hennigan
You know, I I like to stay involved in what else is going on?
00:21:28 Sarah Hennigan
And end the process. You know, you know. If I'm a cinematographer, I'm there for a very distinct portion of the film, and then I have to let it go until it's done right. Yeah? Which can you know, be anything from a month to years later sometimes.
00:21:46 Katherine Stewart
And then editing is just a very specific focused process.
00:21:50 Sarah Hennigan
Exactly an and a different time frame in the life of a film, so I think that's A to me. It's a fun part of being a filmmaker that has different interests. Is that I, you know, I can come into different parts of the process. I think the you know the process as a writer director is the longest by far and therefore.
00:22:11 Sarah Hennigan
The most tiring.
00:22:14 Sarah Hennigan
And so to be able to sort of like recharge your creative energies by, you know in you know in the instance of like color correction you know I can be on a project for two days and that's it. That's just my role, right? At the very very end, and that sometimes.
00:22:29 Sarah Hennigan
I think really healthy.
00:22:30 Sarah Hennigan
To to have that sort of creative.
00:22:33 Sarah Hennigan
Energy.
00:22:36 Sarah Hennigan
Over a short period of time that can be very like quickly rewarding.
00:22:41 Katherine Stewart
Well Sarah, I really enjoyed this.
00:22:46 Sarah Hennigan
Me too.
00:22:47 Sarah Hennigan
Yeah.
00:22:49 Katherine Stewart
Thank you so much for talking with me.
00:22:53 Katherine Stewart
Alright, I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Sarah and if you did, we hope you'll subscribe. Tell your friends, tell your family. Tell your neighbors.
00:23:02 Katherine Stewart
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00:23:05 Katherine Stewart
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00:23:12 Katherine Stewart
Until next time this is stage and screen.