The Cinematography of "Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake)" with DP Marcus Patterson [Sundance Film Festival 2025]

Wednesday, January 29th, 2025

Written and directed by Sierra Falconer in her feature debut, Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake), follows distinct slices of life, all centered around a small community based on Green Lake, Michigan.

In anticipation of the film's premiere during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, we sat down with cinematographer Marcus Patterson to discuss making Sunfish, from handling boat scenes on the water, to hauling camera equipment down 80 feet of rickety wooden stairs.

 by Ryan Rosenblum

How did the opportunity to shoot Sunfish come your way? What about the script and Sierra Falconer's vision connected with you?

Marcus: Sierra and I met about ten months before production and I wanted to shoot the script from the first moment I read it.  I grew up in Alabama and we went to the lake every summer.  I don’t think one year has passed that I didn’t spend at least a week on Lake Martin.  Sierra and I both wanted the film to feel like a memory;  we wanted it to have that timeless effervescence that very specific memories have in your mind.  I hope it elicits feelings of nostalgia in audiences, whether for the lake or just a different time in life when things felt simpler.

One of Sierra’s biggest influences in writing the film was Lucretia Martel’s La Cienega.  We wanted the film to have a similar structure of dropping in on characters at seemingly arbitrary moments to get a glimpse of their life and allow the narrative to float between storylines.   During our couple weeks of prep, Sierra brought me a bunch of old family photos and we really liked the way they felt.  They all slightly faded colors that photographs get when they’re printed and then sit in a box for a couple decades, and they were all framed slightly unprofessionally.  We talked about having the feeling that someone was just walking by one of our scenes and snaps a quick photo and we wanted Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) to feel that way. 

What camera system did you end up shooting Sunfish with? What qualities were you seeking with your lens choices? 

Marcus: We shot on the Alexa Mini LF primarily with MasterBuilt Soft Flares.  For the boat scenes I used an Angenieux 25-250 HR because I couldn’t control the distance between us and the sunfish, so having that zoom that matched our primary lens set was important.  I also carried an Arri Signature Prime 12mm to get the very widest frame we could without distortion.

I love portraiture on the LF.  I like how close you can get to characters and feel the proximity of the camera to the subject.  Also, Sierra said from the beginning she wanted to capture the vastness of the lake and the environment, so the LF gave us a wider field of view with a large format sensor. 

An Alexa LF build with an Angenieux 25-250mm, on set of Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake)

We tested dozens of lenses before settling on the MasterBuilts.  We were looking for a set of lenses that gave us the gentle qualities we found appealing in aged photographs but were also reliable enough to shoot in the woods a days drive from the closest camera house. I decided we needed something that gave us the aberrations and character of a vintage lens set, but in a more robust housing with consistency across focal lengths. 

I didn’t want a focal length to go down during the shoot because I may not get it back in time!  We didn’t have enough PA’s to send someone to Chicago for a day. Once I settled on the SoftFlares, Sean Jenkins at Keslow Camera Los Angeles helped me find a zoom lens that matched the characteristics of our primes.

We tested a few zooms, and I liked the Angenieux 25-250 HR best but it didn’t cover a full frame sensor.  For those shots, I cropped into 35mm mode which was perfect because it gave us a narrower field of view and I was primarily using it when Lu and the Sunfish were farther away.  We also learned that we really liked the optical vignetting on the LF as well, so we used the zoom with the full sensor for our shots with Nan and Pop watching the baby loon through binoculars.

 

 

"I never felt like we were shooting a small movie in the forest in Michigan — we always felt like Sunfish had the same priority as the network TV shows and massive films prepping alongside us."

 

 

When it comes to your experience making Sunfish in particular, how did working with Keslow Camera help bring the film to life? Were there any challenges during the production that we were able to alleviate?

Marcus: I had worked with Keslow Camera on several short films in the past but I didn’t have a consistent contact point. Sean Jenkins (Business Development, Los Angeles) reached out a few months before production to see if we were working with anyone on the film, so we hopped on the phone and chatted through my desires for the movie.  I also told him how tiny of a film Sunfish was and what our budget was likely to be.  Fortunately, it didn’t seem to bother him at all!  Sean lined up a lens test for me the following week and we haven’t stopped working together since.  I sent him a laundry list of problems I needed to solve for this film and Sean was ready to help me figure everything out.

I never felt like we were shooting a small movie in the forest in Michigan — we always felt like Sunfish had the same priority as the network TV shows and massive films prepping alongside us.  One thing that drives me nuts, especially if you’re using any sort of vintage optics, is testing a lens set and then shooting with a different lens even if its the same make or model.  It never comes out the same.  Every one of those individual vintage lenses have their own character, properties, and coloration.  I did a whole lens test at another company and I wrote down the serial numbers and I requested that exact lens set, but they couldn’t guarantee me I would get those lenses.  Why am I doing the test then?  Sean and Keslow Camera made sure we had everything we needed to be successful, no matter how large the ask was.  I think sometimes as filmmakers we just need that confidence from our support teams and it makes the whole experience a lot smoother.

Are there any members of the Sunfish camera department or production team in general you’d like to acknowledge for their contributions to the project?


Marcus: Our camera team was small but mighty.  Our 1st AC is Angelo Clarizio, who's a fantastic DP in his own right and ended up shooting a full day of 2nd Unit “B roll” when Sierra and I were working with our underwater DP.  2nd AC is Isabella De Marte, a Perth native that I met shooting a UCLA thesis a couple of years ago.  Isabella is also a classmate of Sierra’s, so it was nice to have a good UCLA group with us in Michigan.

This movie was rough on the camera team.  The primary Sunfish cabin was at the edge of an eighty foot drop into the lake with old wooden stairs going doing to the pier.  We tried as much as we could to minimize going back and forth, but with schedules and light changing we had to traverse those stairs quite a bit.  I hated wrapping a scene and looking at Angelo and Isabella and saying “Alright guys, we gotta head down to the pier… again!”   They never gave us hell about it but I know it sucked!  We absolutely could not have done this project without those two.

Doug Gardner was our wildlife cinematographer.  He, Sierra, and Grant were in Green Lake about two months before production getting some of the critical wildlife footage for our film.  The loons play such a huge role in Sunfish; Sierra was actually changing the script based on the footage they got so that Nan and Pop’s reactions to the loons they see speak to the story being told.  JohnPaul Morris did all our underwater photography for the Two Hearted chapter.  He’s a scuba-certified director and DP local to Michigan who really came through for us for those moments so that the Finn’s big fish felt real and haunting.

Is there anything about the experience of making Sunfish that has impacted your creative process going forward?

Marcus: Sunfish sort of felt like the masters dissertation for rural indie films after a solid decade of making scrappy shorts all over the world.  I feel like my process hasn’t changed all that much, but I’d be curious to see if some of my collaborators felt the same way.

I love being in the space that we’re going to shoot.  We met several times in LA leading up to Michigan, but there’s really no substitute for being on the lake in person, soaking up the afternoon light and watching it glimmer off the lake.  I’m a shotlist person, but its hard for me to shotlist before I’m on location or in the set.  When you’re in the space you can see how far dolly track can go, or where you can place a camera for an intimate private close up, and all the limitations and opportunities the location provides.  It’s really challenging for me to do that from afar or over Zoom.

Everything we plan before on-location prep is a wish list.  For Sunfish, we had two weeks on location where Sierra and I went through every scene in nearly every location of the film and put together a photo board of the film.  I love photo boards.  I love putting actual photos of the shot into my HOD’s hands so they can see roughly where the camera’s looking and I can be as effective as possible working around a room.

What advice would you give to aspiring cinematographers who are inspired by your work?


Marcus: Any advice I have for aspiring cinematographers I probably need myself!  I don’t think you can watch too many films.  I think the way you start a conversation with a director about a project, usually, is related to the movies you’ve both seen and that elicit memories about the project you’re going to be discussing.  If you have no visual library in your head to discuss about a project, the conversation is really short.  Tons of my short film opportunities over the years I really had no business shooting, but I had seen several of the directors’ favorite films so they took a chance on working with me.  I once got a job because I ran into a director I was interviewing with at a screening of Stalker at the Nuart! 

For my journey, film school has been important but I do not think you need to attend a film school.  I do think you need to put in the same amount of time as a film school — 2-3 years, maybe more — treating your career like film school.  Meeting up-and-coming directors, producers, and writers and making shoestring budget work with them will go a long way.  So whether you are a film school person or not, you will have several years of grinding and meeting people before stuff ‘clicks.’  Make sure its fun stuff.  Find stories and collaborators that you enjoy being around and have the same tastes you do.

Finally, go outside.  Don’t let it all be about movies.  Go for a jog, ride a bike, or play the guitar or something so that it’s not all filmmaking ALL the time.  We all do this because we love it, but if you work yourself to death and don’t make time in your life for other things that matter you may end up not loving it at all anymore. [x]

Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) will be available for streaming online via the Sundance Film Festival, from January 30th to Feburary 2nd, 2025.
Click here to learn more.