Ayla Ruby
Carolina Costa is a cinematographer whose most recent work can be seen on the new show Grotesquerie, but she’s probably most well known for her recent work on Fancy Dance alongside director Erica Tremblay. Costa won the ZEISS Cinematography Award at SXSW in 2023 for her shooting prowess on the film. Starring Lily Gladstone and Isabel Deroy-Olson, Fancy Dance tackles the issue of missing Indigenous women.
Over Zoom, Costa shared what went into bringing the film to screen. She shared how close-ups and large formats helped center the stories of young Indigenous women. Costa talked about the Moon and how that played into shooting the story, both practically and symbolically, and went into detail about bringing the final Powwow scene that the movie is named for, to life. Read on for the full conversation.
Ayla Ruby: I’m very excited to talk about this film.
Carolina Costa: Oh, that’s really nice to hear. That’s really nice to hear.
Ayla Ruby: It was stunning. I was watching it again this morning. It was stunning and just really visually beautiful, so this is wonderful.
Carolina Costa: Ah, that’s really good to hear. Yeah, it’s a real special movie, I think, in general, but also for me as an experience of doing it, it’s also quite special.
Ayla Ruby: Can you talk about, a little bit, how you got onto this project and what really drew you into it?
Carolina Costa: Yeah. The project came through my agents, my reps. And basically, Erica had heard my name through other people in the industry. And also Deidre [Backs], one of the producers, had also heard … My name had been recommended through her own network.
So I think when they were compiling a list of folks they wanted to interview, my name was one of those in that list. And I got the script and I read it and I was just so touched by it. Just the text that Erica and Miciana wrote, just really heartfelt and honest, and it really kind of … The first time I read it I cried and I was just like, “This is such a special project.”
And the other thing about it is that we haven’t seen those characters on screen before, and that is one of the elements that I’m always taking in consideration when I’m taking a project. I want to make sure that I’m supporting filmmakers. They’re telling stories that we should be seeing on the screen, but we haven’t yet. So that was a huge plus. And of course I wanted to do the project, and then I had a meeting with Erica via Zoom and we just really clicked very quickly. And the fact of how she wanted to portray this woman, how she wanted to portray a missing Indigenous woman, you know what I mean, you never see the horrors of it. It’s treated in a very delicate way.
And I think we connected because we both felt that this story needed to find the beauty in everyday life. That’s kind of how we define the shooting style, it’s like where do you find beauty in everyday life. But also portraying what’s happening in that community but not losing sight of the beautiful moments as well.
Ayla Ruby: I’ve read that you have a journalism background. Do you think that your journalism background informed how you approached this story or informed how you shot the story?
Carolina Costa: I don’t know if it necessarily … Definitely my journalism background has given me a sense of empathy for people, and I’m sure that is in the back of my head when I’m behind a camera, behind the lens portraying people. Of course that sense of empathy and finding ways to relate to people is definitely there, but I don’t think it necessarily informs, in terms of a visual grammar, how I approach cinematography.
Ayla Ruby: Okay. You mentioned visual grammar and I’d love to talk about that because I feel like the lighting and the colors, everything is very striking in this film and it helps the storytelling and get the message across so much. Can you talk about your approach to that? You start with the script. How does that all come together for you?
Carolina Costa: Yeah, I tend to be open and flexible to the filmmakers I work with. I think my job is to be there present and help them to get to their vision, whatever that might be. A lot of the times during pre-production, prior to like, oh, it’s going to be handheld, it’s going to be a static camera, it’s going to be dark, it’s going to be bright, whatever that is that you get to, I like to talk to the directors and understand really the psychological background of every decision these characters are making. Why is Jax doing these things? Why is Roki acting this way?
And so for me it’s important to understand the emotional landscape and I’ll call it the interior worlds of the characters. And then from then understand also the landscape they’re part of. So a lot of the beginnings, like boots on ground, is really just hanging out in Tulsa, and going to the rez and then meeting people. And just really observing, what does it look like at the end of the day, what does it look like at night? How people light their homes. So it’s really like, a lot of my job it feels like observing.
And so I think based on all of those informations, the grammar starts forming from that. And then of course you have movies that influence you. And I think Erica and I at the beginning talks about Andrea Arnold and how she shoots … The camera is so alive and it has such a specific POV and it’s part of the world of her character. So that is definitely one of the references … We had in the sense of like Fish Tank or American Honey, that you’re just really living the moment with the characters.
And that’s part of what influenced us to go in handheld. We also wanted the world to feel that it wasn’t … Because it’s not in a static world, there’s so much happening. And then you think of a character like Roki, that is still a child but becoming an adult very quick, this world is constantly ever turning around them. So it didn’t feel right that the camera would be just static. But we also didn’t want a camera that was so frenetic that all you’re watching is the camera move.
I’m interested, and particularly in this movie I was interested in cinematography as another element, not something that was calling attention to itself or really wanted the people in it to be able to live in it. And I think other decision that we took right from the beginning was to shoot in large format, really wanted … You should large format, it’s just when you do a closeup of someone who really feels like people are jumping out of the screen at you because of the field of view. And we really wanted this young Indigenous women to be at the center of their stories and to be bigger than life in a way, but we didn’t want to just be all soft focus and they didn’t see the world around them as well. So large format, you can have a beautiful closeup, but you can still see the surroundings. So that was another choice we made.
And I think a lot of the other choices we built as we started having conversations and visiting the places and building the color palette. And of course that’s also a conversation with Charlotte [Royer], our production designer, who is incredible and understanding, what would be the colors of each space.
Ayla Ruby: Now, I’ve read about the color palette a little bit and I’ve read that the blues are how you telegraph Roki and Jax’s relationship, that they’re very safe. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Carolina Costa: Yeah, blue was something that kept on just coming to us. A lot of the times it’s used, I guess, to portray the coldness of the world. And for us, somehow it just kind of … All the things pointed as the blue was actually safety.
And it came from two pieces of information or decisions that had been made. One is the clothes that Roki’s mom uses at the strip club are blue. And then when she watches the videos of Roki and her mom, when Roki’s watching her and her mom doing the fancy events, so on the TV, the VHS, that light emanating from the television is blue. So those two things anchored the blue into the safe space for that character. And then we started bringing the blue into the strip club. So you have this consensual, queer relationship between two Indigenous women in a room that is a variation of blue. So we, you know what I mean, started playing with the variations of blue because that is also a moment of safeness.
And then the other element that was really important to get there and anchor this, was we were discussing a lot about the importance of the moon in Erica’s culture. And we’re talking like when you have your first moon, that is your grandma visiting, so the Moon is the grandma. Again, the color blue of the night, of the full moon, that was important for us. And when are we going to use it, where are the moments that that light exists?
And the other one was, one of those discoveries is we were driving around the rez at night and I started noticing how dark a lot of the streets are and there are a lot of lampposts and stuff. I was just looking, but in the darkness you could see all the little homes. And then I saw outside this little greenish, blue lights that was basically an energy saving bulb per se. And some of them were for mosquitoes and stuff like that, so we’re like, “Oh, that’s cool. It kind of goes into our color palette and it’s part of the world.”
So we brought that blue and to the exterior of their house as well. And of course I stretched that concept into the walls outside were becoming a little blue as well. I guess we found this little concept in a practical world and we stretched them into a visual grammar.
Ayla Ruby: You mentioned moonlight a little bit and I wanted to ask about … There’s this scene in the cornfield, and it towards the end of the movie and it’s a big argument between Jax and Roki, and the thing that kept sticking out to me in the scene is the moonlight. And I would love if you could talk about that symbolically and practically how that all worked, because it’s just very pretty and it’s very interesting.
Carolina Costa: Yeah. Yeah, that scene is definitely my favorite. There’s not a single time I watched that scene and not cry my eyes out because the performances of both of them are just … Even just to talk about it I get emotional because I think it’s so incredible. And so many people that watched the movie have referenced that scene and how much it connected to their own stories. And a lot of aunties came out and said that that scene really touched them. And I think a lot of people can relate.
We had picked I think four or five scenes that we said that the full moonlight would exist. And the first one being when she has her moon, her first moon, and then the last one being the fields, and felt like a good circle of all the changes that are going through in their lives. And there’s also the practical sense of it that in the cornfields, just a little away from the light pollution, so it’s like what would eliminate this. And every version of it that we thought, “Oh, maybe it’s a work light that is in the fields,” or something like that, it’s just nothing really felt correct for the emotional states that are in.
And the moon there, for me, there’s a sense of involving them, englobing them in this little bubble that very soon breaks because then they part different ways, but there is this moment that they’re just confronting each other about how they feel. And Jax says what it signifies in Seneca-Cayuga, and it’s the other mother, and it just says so much about that relationship. So for us it made emotional sense that the moonlight will be there for that moment in their relationship.
Ayla Ruby: I think it comes through totally on screen. I know we’re starting to get close on time, but I also want to ask about the Powwow. It’s the final bit of the movie and it’s alluded to through … Well, it’s mentioned the whole movie and then we were there. Can you talk about the prep to shoot that, what shooting that was like, and just anything about that process?
Carolina Costa: Yeah, it was of course the title of the movie. Since from the beginning it’s like, everybody’s like, “How are we going to shoot this?” It was a small movie, you know what I mean, not a huge budget.
So the scope of that scene, I think, not scared but it definitely came with weight. A lot of the conversations were around that. But right at the beginning I had this dream about one of those construction lights being in the movie, and it’s a variation of a blue color as well, those lights normally. And I mentioned it because everybody’s like, “How are we going to light it?” Because the idea was always that we could build in the tension and really build in that big emotion moment at the end that they’re dance together but we know what’s going to happen after and it’s not great. How can that beautiful thing happen and then this awful thing that is about to happen coexist and how can the camera move 360? How do you light? So it was like, “Oh my God, we need huge balloons, we need this.” Everything just felt so out of our scope of our little movie.
And I mentioned that light and everybody’s like, “Oh yeah, that’s interesting.” And then we went to that museum in Oklahoma City and we were watching videos, Powwow videos, and then, kid you not, every Powwow that light was there. So we’re like, “Oh, this totally makes sense.” Then from there we’re like, “Okay, let’s get four of those.” And then we’d just put it in every corner and then we can just shoot this freely. And the color makes sense emotionally to the story, and then it also practically makes sense for the world. It feels real.
And yeah, it was a long night that we shot that and we shot almost chronologically, so we would go … Because the idea was every little segment, it was like a continuous shot, and you only cut when you get to the next one. So we really designed, Erica and I, each part we did a whole map with Charles [E. Elmore], our operator, where the camera’s going to dance and then there’ll be people here. And then here she’ll get confused and then here will come all the tassels and things on her face, whereas … So we build, “Here’s the cup.” So we really built on a piece of paper a lot of it and really prepped.
And on the day I was just like, “How are we going to film this,” and stuff, and Erica’s like, “Don’t worry, people will show up.” And they did. It was incredible. People showed up, so many people. Erica says that people would show up, she was like, for people to show up in Native country, it has to be raffles. So every couple of shots they’d raffled out a television or they raffled about something. And people just continued to stay over the night for what was coming next. And it was just really incredible to see community in that way, that people just really showed up and stayed all night.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, that’s wonderful. And is there anything else you want people to know about the film or your work or you?
Carolina Costa: I don’t know about that. That is a hard question. I just want people to watch the movie as much as possible. It had such a short run in the theaters, but now it’s on Apple TV. I just really want people to watch because I think everyone will connect with the movie.
It’s quite amazing, my dad is 81 years old, in Brazil, a completely different upbringing and not his story at all. And he called me, because he was crying, he said it was just like … And he said that he had fallen in love with the characters because he felt the people making the movie were in love with those people as well. And I just think that’s such an accomplishment in itself of what Erica created and the group of people that she brought in to make this.
Ayla Ruby: I think that’s beautiful, and that’s a wonderful note to end on. Thank you so much for chatting.
Carolina Costa: Of course, thank you.
Ayla Ruby: No problem.
Carolina Costa: Thank you for your time.
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