A futuristic private eye searches for his lost client in Director Lisa Joy’s new sci-fi romantic mystery, Reminiscence.
Joy’s film tells the story of Nick Bannister, an investigator who helps his clients access lost memories. When an alluring new client named Mae disappears, Nick becomes obsessed with finding her and uncovers a violent conspiracy.
Following the August 28 DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Joy sat down with Director J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker), to discuss the making of Reminiscence.
During the conversation, Joy discussed working with her DP Paul Cameron to bring the film to life.
“I’d like to say we have a subliminal connection that needs no words,” said Joy. “We have this way of talking about the film where he’s technical, and I’ll talk about color palette. I told him I didn’t want this to have the harsh blues and whites of a lot of sci-fi. I wanted it to have more warm, natural colors because I was trying to take some of the austerity out of sci-fi so the world could feel more tactile. And the same thing with lenses — I was talking to him about how when our lovers first meet, we should use a lot of long lenses so it’s like desire, infatuation. You’re watching someone from afar, and they look so perfect, and you think you know them. As we come to see the characters, we creep into a wider lens, closer up, and you can see almost the ugliness in their faces, the asymmetries, the things that are off about them.”
Reminiscence is Joy’s feature directing debut. She has also directed episodes of the series Westworld. Joy has been a DGA member since 2017.
You can listen to Joy's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.