Moral History

In the early aughts, in a small Iowa town, Alice a student at the local Catholic high school enjoys watching Titanic and testing her knowledge of movie titles with word scrambles played in online chat rooms. When one of her internet encounters takes an unexpected turn, she suddenly discovers there's pleasure to be had in pleasuring oneself. Soon thereafter, she attends a four-day Catholic retreat, where she struggles to reconcile her nascent urges with the prospect of eternal judgment.

Written and directed by Karen Maine, the coming-of-age comedy Yes, God, Yes stars Natalia Dyer (of Stranger Things fame) as Alice. The feature's depiction of growing up Catholic was inspired by Maine's own experiences. When we were shooting these things I hadn't seen since I was 15, I had a few moments where I was like, This is freaking me out,' she reflects. But that was a good thing. We were trying to recreate it.

Prior to shooting the movie, Maine and producers Katie Cordeal and Colleen Hammond made an 11-minute short adapted from a portion of the feature's screenplay. Serving as a proof of concept, the short marked the first producing credits for Cordeal and Hammond, and the first time in the director's chair for Maine, who had previously served as a writer on the short and feature versions of director Gillian Robespierre's Obvious Child. Cinematographer Todd Antonio Somodevilla was behind the camera for the short Yes, God, Yes, after which, Maine says, There was no question that Todd was going to be the DP for the feature.

Aided by a joint Panavision and Light Iron grant awarded at the 2017 Tribeca Film Institute's TFI Network industry market, the filmmakers shot the feature with a camera and lens package that included two Alexa Minis and a set of Primo primes prepped out of Panavision Atlanta, and for the final grade they partnered with senior colorist Sean Dunckley at Light Iron New York. Panavision recently caught up with Maine, Somodevilla, Cordeal, Hammond and Dunckley to discuss their collaboration on the feature, which is available now in virtual cinemas and on VOD and digital.

Panavision: How did the original short film come about?

Colleen Hammond (producer): Karen's an old friend of mine, and she came to me with the script for the feature in early 2015, I want to say. As soon as I read it, I knew Katie would love it as much as I did. So I looped her in and we started to make the short as a proof of concept for the feature.

Katie Cordeal (producer): Colleen and I both went to all-girls Catholic high schools, and we went on a retreat like the one that's in the feature, too, so it definitely resonated with us. A couple years went by, and we were super-motivated, but we weren't able to get it off the ground; we were trying to get traction with financing and finding our director. So we ended up personally financing the short, with Karen directing which obviously we should have done from the get-go because she's a natural director and it's her story to begin with.

Karen Maine (writer, director): I just assumed when I started writing this that I would just be the writer, because I'd never directed anything. I was showing the feature script to a lot of friends who are directors, and one of them thankfully was like, I'm not going to direct this. You should direct this.' It literally hadn't even crossed my mind. And then she said, The first thing I do as a director when I get a script I haven't written is find a way to make it my own.' And that filled me with fear I didn't want someone to come in and do that. I ran it by Katie and Colleen, and thankfully they were like, Yeah. Okay.' So we did the short as a proof of concept for the feature, and people really connected with it, which was wonderful. It just exploded online.

How did Todd get involved with the short?

Maine: We have a mutual friend, Gary Gardner.

Todd Antonio Somodevilla (cinematographer): I shot a movie for Gary called The Nymphets. And then I got a call one day out of the blue from Katie, and she said, Hey, we're shooting a short film, would you be interested?' She sent me the script, and I thought it was brilliant.

At what point was Natalia cast for the short?

Hammond: Two days before we started shooting! [Laughs.]

Cordeal: From when we decided that this is how much money we have to make this short, let's just do it,' to when we shot, it was three weeks. It was really quick, and finding Alice was our number one thing to make it happen. Stranger Things came out around that same time, and we just blindly emailed Natalia. She was a big fan of Obvious Child, she liked the short script that Karen had written, she just happened to be in New York at the time, and she said yes' right away.

Following the success of the short, you received the first Panavision and Light Iron grant to be awarded through the Tribeca Film Institute. What did that process entail?

Hammond: The Tribeca Film Institute has a program called TFI Network during the Tribeca Film Festival in April. We applied to be part of the network [in 2017], and then we had 50 meetings in like 2 and a half days that were set up for us. One of those meetings was with Terra Bliss and Megan Marquis from Panavision and Light Iron [respectively]. We had a great conversation, and they were really excited about the project.

Maine: They mentioned this grant, but we thought we would have to apply later. But actually everyone they met with was being considered. When they announced that we had won, we were all so excited. We had no idea!

Cordeal: It was at the festival's awards ceremony. Everyone had champagne, and I know all of our champagne just flew out.

Hammond: I think I even saw a tear in Katie's eye.

Cordeal: Oh my gosh, I definitely

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