A taste of the bizarre life of behind the walls of Britain's stately homes is revealed in Director Emerald Fennell’s black comedy, Saltburn.
Fennell’s film tells the story of Oliver, an Oxford University student who finds himself drawn into the world of Felix, a charming and aristocratic classmate when he is invited to spend the summer at the sprawling estate of Felix’s eccentric family.
On December 2, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Fennell discussed the making of Saltburn during a Q&A moderated by Director David Lowery (Peter Pan & Wendy).
During the conversation, Fennell spoke about her love of expressionist filmmaking.
“I like to be thoughtful about coverage. I don’t get much excess. Things tend to be planned fairly precisely in advance. That’s the wonderful thing about working with [DP] Linus [Sandgren] too, both of us like to be more expressionist in our work. A lot of the time you’re working with the production designers, with everyone to kind of provide this pathetic fallacy that every scene, every camera move, has a sort of emotional reason behind it. My hope for any film, but this film in particular, is would it work as a silent film? Can you watch it on mute, and do you have an idea of what’s happening?”
Fennell’s other directorial credit is the 2020 DGA Award-nominated feature, Promising Young Woman.
Fennell joined the DGA in 2022.