9. Leonora Anzaldua
Creator's Cafe Episode 9. Leonora Anzaldua: Lighting the Mystery with host Jessica Payne of Kika Labs
Leonora Anzaldua and I dive into how she uses the camera as a character in her cinematography, and how she brings dramatic dimension through lighting the darkness.
Show Notes:
Follow: LeonoraMakesMovies.com
IG: LeonoraMakesMovies
IG: LeonoraMakesPhotos
IMDB
Creator's Challenge: Tell a story in a single picture
Communicate a message with just images
Bio & Intro
My guest Leonora Anzaldua is a filmmaker, photographer, and storyteller. She has worked on American Horror Story, shot documentaries across Asia, created many award-winning short films, and shot with AwesomenessTV and Skybound Entertainment. Leonora has worked with Barnes and Noble, All Saints, Ball is Life, Buzzfeed Branded, Fox Studios, and WNYC Studios.
Her works have screened at many festivals and earned her the Sun Cinematography award, along with a Student Emmy nomination. She creates stunning images through her work which combine deep character reflection with beautiful storytelling. is inspired by Renaissance painters, contemporary studio artists, and her own deep dive into cultural representation. Leonora is a passionate creator committed to amplifying underrepresented voices.
Mentioned
Ian Asbjørnsen
Caravaggio/Chiaroscuro
Gregory Crewdson
Creator's Cafe with Jessica Payne of Kika Labs
Host Jessica Payne of Kika Labs breaks down the subtle and the sublime of the creative process with inspiring artists at the Creator's Cafe.
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Theme Music
Our theme music is composed and performed by Kyle deTarnowsky.
Transcript:
Jessica
Welcome to Creators Cafe. I'm your host, Jessica Payne. I'm a performer, performance coach and multi-hyphenate creator. I'm going to be bringing you conversations with some of my favorite creators where we talk about the sublime and the specifics of the creative journey. So grab a drink, get cozy. Let's go.
My guest, Leonora Anzaldua, is a filmmaker, photographer and storyteller. She's worked on American Horror Story. Shot documentaries across Asia, created many award winning short films and shot with Awesomeness TV and Skybound Entertainment. Leonora has worked with Barnes Noble, All Saints Ball his life, BuzzFeed branded Fox Studios and WNYC Studios. Her works have screened at many festivals and earned her awards and nominations, such as the Son Cinematography Award and a student Emmy nom. That's the thing she creates images through her work that are so stunning. They combine deep character reflection and beautiful storytelling. I encourage you to check out her website so you can see what her work looks like while we're talking. She's inspired by Renaissance painters, contemporary studio artists, and her own deep dive into her cultural representation. She is a passionate creator committed to amplifying underrepresented voices, and I am so glad to have her voice on my show.
Please welcome my friend Leonora Anzaldua. Well, here is Leonora Anzaldua. Welcome to Creators Cafe. And could you please say your name because it's so much more beautiful when you say it.
Leonora
My name is Leonora Anzaldua.
Jessica
So delicious. I love it. And what are you drinking today?
Leonora
I just looked and I forgot again.
Leonora
Oh.
Jessica
Belarus?
Leonora
Ballentine?
Jessica
Ballentine.
Leonora
Ballentine very, very old. Scott. Whiskey. Very old. I want you to know it's a very old label.
Jessica
It was like 17 years old when I was gifted it. And so. And that was a few years ago. So it's especially very old.
Leonora
Very old. It's delicious.
Jessica
It's really smooth. I like it. Hmm. Well, welcome. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. It's good to catch up. We've done a lot of projects in the past, but I haven't seen you as much in the last little bit, so I'm glad to have you here again. And a little hope. Yeah, it's been a long.
Jessica
But you're coming out of it. And you look fantastic. If you're just listening, she is wearing fantastic leather look pants and a statement necklace and looks amazing. So thank you. So you've done so many things in your career. How do you think of yourself as an artist? What are kind of the main labels that you are leaning into now?
Jessica
Or think of yourself overall as holding?
Leonora
I definitely will always think of myself as a photographer. That was kind of my first thing when I was very little. I loved art like like I was a toddler and would be at art museums, like, obsessed with like, you know, abstract paintings and stuff. And my mom was just like, What are you looking at this this this is a square on a canvas.
Leonora
Like, she'd just like, I loved it. And my mom was like, very patient with me. But like, I was the one dragging my feet in art museums as a toddler. Like, I was like, why? I want to look at this longer. And so I always I always was really drawn to art. I loved painting. And I was also vulnerable to the myth of natural talent, I guess, and thought that I was bad at drawing.
Leonora
And so photography allowed me to circumvent that. And I just never I never ended up like working on learning to draw. And so but I found, like cameras to be a great way to express myself and be able to show things that were inside visually. And as I grew as a photographer, I started to create worlds and understood how to manipulate things with lenses and light.
Leonora
And so that will definitely always be a part of me. And I think generally, you know, I, gosh, I, I write poetry and I make films and I just I think maybe like a storyteller is like the best way I really think of filmmaking. Very unlike the studio model as a holistic endeavor. And so for me, it's it's the, the, the siloing of the different roles in filmmaking is awkward and odd, and which isn't to say that the process is not collaborative, very much the opposite, but I just think of everybody as a person that's there to make and contribute and we all have different things that maybe we're a little bit more experienced or
Leonora
skilled that. But that doesn't mean that anybody on the team doesn't have things to contribute in other areas of filmmaking either.
Jessica
Mm hmm. Yeah, definitely. And I've been on multiple sets with you, and you always have such a calm and joyful, yet artistically passionate and driven presence. It's really inspiring to work with you. Yeah, I think one of the things that I like about working on set with you is you also you have this attention to detail, but you collaborate really well and beautifully and you managed to bring a beautiful esthetic to every piece I've worked with you on.
Jessica
What has influenced your esthetic or kind of how you go about playing with light and bringing that mixture of kinesthetic movement and light along with this in-depth character work. I think that's something you do really incredibly well. Oh, thank you.
Leonora
Yeah. I mean, I think that a lot of it is because it's to me it's storytelling. And like the camera also is a character. It's also telling the story. And like I said, I don't think of it as as a segmented, siloed kind of thing where this is your job, that's your job. I definitely feel like it's all of our jobs to help each other do the best job that we can.
Leonora
What has influenced my work with Light is Caravaggio, my favorite painter, and the drama of chiaroscuro lighting. Just like makes my heart explode. I just I just like, I really love, like, moody lighting and the like the mystery of darkness. And generally paintings, especially Renaissance paintings, influence my lighting quite a bit. I have confused many a director coming for.
Leonora
Cinematography interviews by bringing paintings to them as as references for the.
Leonora
Movie. Because I don't I don't think in terms of replicating other films. I think and I think in terms of paintings and photography. My I, I had the the benefit, the, the pleasure and was was fortunate to have a really brilliant photographer as one of my photo teachers at Yale, Gregory Crewdson, who also makes just like the most magical, beautiful images that are just like stories in a frame.
Leonora
And his lighting also really, like, just makes me my heart too happy. So that that from a lighting perspective, from camera movement perspective, I think that the thing that I'm like, naturally most gifted at is a handheld camera work. And a lot of that I think comes from being an actor and being a dancer and having been trained as a gymnast, as a dancer, as a kid, like just sort of being able to move gracefully and being very aware of body position and isolation of movement, how to how to bend into my hips and move in my knees without jiggling a ton, which, of course, handheld always has some breath to it.
Leonora
But the more you can keep still, the more elegant it'll be.
Jessica
And I've definitely noticed that your work with handheld makes us feel like the audience is a third character in the room, so it feels like another person as opposed to wobbly camera trying to evoke a mood by pushing it. It feels very natural as you're moving where we want to move naturally.
Leonora
I mean, I think that's that's what I mean about the character or the camera as a character. And and also why I think that, you know, being an actor informs that as well. It's like I do feel like I'm in the scene with actors, and especially when I'm shooting a close up of someone in an emotional moment, it's like, Wow, I am with them.
Leonora
And like the little things, there's little things I'm responding to. I'm, you know, it's like I'm feeling their beats and their beat changes and like, if something sad happens, like I kind of just exhale a little bit and the camera drops just a little bit. The camera feels like, Yeah, she feels right. Hmm. So yeah, that I think in that way, like my acting background informs the camera work.
Leonora
I was very, very shy child, and so I didn't learn to act until I was an adult and in college. And but I did do theater productions as a kid and on crew. And so there's something that I really love about film, motion picture and that like, you get the, like, wonderful synergy of a theater production, but you also get to keep like a picture of it at the end, right?
Leonora
So it's like combines these two, Oh, that's cool.
Leonora
I enjoy a lot. So that, that does that. Like, just like the joy of creative collaboration is I think, another thing that does inform and it's that like deep pleasure I take in what other people contribute to, which like maybe I don't know that that informs. So much my like visual approach as, like my emotional or collaborative approach the way that I, I do try to like welcome other people's input.
Leonora
And, and even if we have a plan for how things are going like here, people, if they have ideas and you know from, from like somebody doing electric work to the actor who maybe like has a cool idea for how to do a scene and like trying to add a little bit of flexibility to whatever the plan was, if it's possible so that people can contribute because you never really know how much better something could be if you don't allow other people to to also contribute their ideas.
Jessica
So yeah, that's beautiful. From the filmmaking side, what are some of your favorite projects that you've worked on?
Leonora
Oh gosh, it's it's a big question, Yeah.
Jessica
Is there anybody that you worked with that it felt really special or you got something out of working with them on the project that you really just loved it as as part of the process.
Leonora
There's in as Johnson is someone that I went to graduate school with and he is, is a total sweetheart and just so incredibly creative. He's my maybe the only person that's ever surprised me with the camera move in and the way that he just thinks about visuals is really fun for me because he yeah, he just he's so creative and, and I, I just I mean, one of the things that I love about cinematography, even though I'm doing a lot less of it now, is is I do like that when a director brings such specific ideas that challenge me to make pictures that never would have come out of my head.
Leonora
And also, you know, digging into their brain and using the skill sets that I have to help them realize something that they wouldn't be able to do with their technical skill set. Right. And so it's like looking at the picture and saying, oh, oh, this is what you want to make. Okay? You know, whether it's a reference photo or a neat idea, just an abstract, just something that like kind of and never would have come out of me.
Leonora
And he very much does that. He just kind of surprises me with where he puts the camera or how he moves it. And so that's a lot of fun. I really like when people come up with ideas that we're not sure are possible to execute.
Leonora
And then then we have to.
Leonora
Figure out how we're going to do it. Yeah, that is really fun. I love camera tricks. I really, really enjoy any kind of like front screen rear screen projection tricks. And I do this the stuff a lot and that in a way that, like maybe people don't even realize that it is a camera trick.
Jessica
And there is a few things that kind of researching this. I love researching my friends, so I was grateful on your website that you had labeled kind of your techniques that you were using.
Leonora
Yeah, because other people would otherwise people don't know.
Jessica
Yeah, I wouldn't know. And I feel like I know a lot of this maybe for the audience that doesn't know what those particular terms are. Just could you give a brief overview?
Leonora
Yeah. So like front screen projection or rear screen projection would be where the background of a scene is not physically there, but it is created by a projector either a projector that's hitting the screen on the front or from behind. There's two different types of screen projector setups that you can use and it's a really fun kind of way to warp reality.
Leonora
And if you do it successfully, it doesn't even look like it's happening. But you see this probably most often with car scenes because it's a safe way to have people perform a scene while driving without having to spend the money to get a car to tow them, because you obviously can't have actors driving along and performing in the scene because they'll likely to get into a car accident.
Leonora
And so you have to have ways to ensure the safety of the the actors and also the crew that are shooting. And so one of the less expensive ways to do that is to drive a car onto a stage, put a screen behind them with respect to wherever the camera is, and then project the background onto the screen and it's very fun.
Leonora
And the trick to it is that you have to light the actors without lighting the screen because the screen gets light on it. Then it washes out. And so it's like a very fun lighting exercise. And yeah, that that's the kind of stuff I like to do. And then I guess going back to your other question, the other person that comes to mind is our friend Emily McGregor, who is just so funny and has such a great time and she and I have such a great time together when we shoot.
Leonora
And she also comes up with really fun ideas for, for creative things that we can do in terms of shooting. And she also is as insane about pre-production and detail as I am. Yeah. And so we both actually independently have like very, very detailed spreadsheets that we will shot. We did this before we even knew each other and it was like.
Jessica
Oh.
Leonora
My kindred.
Leonora
Spirit, like the level to which we both obsess.
Leonora
Over shot lists and planning. It makes for a very good match because it's like we just like kind of have that. Like, okay, we both know what's going on. And I think the other thing about us is that like we are both that intense level of planner type personality without being so rigid that we can't regroup when something comes up.
Leonora
And so we've both become very flexible on the day, but it's because we have this like checklist that we know that we can go back to and be like, okay, did everything that we get cover all our checkboxes on this list? Okay, great. Then we have a scene. Yeah. And so it's because, like, we both do so much planning and so much discussion before.
Leonora
Yeah. That we're both really comfortable and then are happy to improvise because we have our like that's how we wrap our brains around it. And we both do that in a similar way. So it's really fun and enjoyable.
Jessica
I love working with both of you because of exactly that. As an actor, you feel like you're in such good hands because you know that the artistic side is being taken care of. So well and you are both wonderful in the moment and on the day. So I just want everyone to work like you both on like all the homework is done and now we're here.
Leonora
We're prepared.
Jessica
And we're ready to play.
Leonora
And I've actually had actors just like, got, like, so annoyed with having to deal with other people's work styles after working with me. It's so I feel like I'm doing them damn right. Like you're so organized and you talk to us about the characters like, Yo, tell us what's going on. Nobody does that. Yeah, yeah.
Jessica
Oh, you. You've said before about working with your mentor on American Horror Story. Can you talk about that experience? Yeah.
Leonora
Michael GOI very kindly hired me as a camera pay camera department production assistant on American Horror Story for the asylum season, which was pretty early. It was very fun. I, I really like that season. It was, it was really just like, oh gosh, it was really fun to be there with that set of actors, just James Cromwell, Jessica Lange Like, they're just so.
Leonora
Zachary Quinto Just really like, gracious, incredibly talented. Oh. Evan Peters Like, they're just they're all so talented. And it was just like, not that any, any of them even knows who I am, but just like to be there and like, watch them work. And they were so brilliant and so professional and just it was just lovely to be a part of it.
Leonora
And I think like to know that we were making something good, you know, that it's like, I mean, they were very long days. There were very hard days. But like when you're exhausted and you're not, you're not getting enough sleep and you're on Union Max days and union men turn around and then you get to like watch James Cromwell and Jessica Lange just be brilliant.
Leonora
You're like, Oh, well, Elise, Elise, we're like doing this to make something good. You know? It definitely helps with the fatigue and the difficulty. And the other thing that I that I took from that, which I think is really was really important for me at the time, was that like the extent to which no matter what what like quote unquote level of production you're on, the work is the same.
Leonora
It's it's that it's not different. I think there there tends to be sometimes occasionally an attitude amongst crew who are frustrated with, you know, low budget indie productions that, you know, this isn't being run well, this isn't being run well, complaining about this, that or the other thing. And yeah, I mean, there there are definitely differences. There's you know, it's different when you have an omelet station in the morning when you get there.
Leonora
That's not an indie production. You don't you know, you don't get sushi at 3 p.m. as a snack.
Leonora
But, but the the work.
Leonora
Is the same. There's, there's still the like oh no like somebody forgot the key prop for this scene and now we all have to figure out how to deal with that. Right? Or we're rearranging the day because of it or whatever or you know, all the same stuff comes up and it's really just like a bowel problem. Solving the job is problem solving and there's no magical all set that is so well-funded and perfect and organized that nothing ever goes wrong.
Leonora
The job is problem solving. And it really, you know, sometimes when people have less patience for things going wrong, especially when you're in charge and you wish that you had the foresight to prevent something because that's most of preproduction is preventing problems before they arise. Right. Which I, I try to do as much as I can. And I think that's how you get us to the set.
Leonora
But if you're in a position where you know, something comes up, that's a really big problem that you didn't foresee because that's what production is. And then people have kind of negative attitudes about it. It can be a little bit discouraging and it's really nice to have the perspective of like, yeah, there's no perfect world where nothing goes wrong like this.
Leonora
This job is problem solving and it doesn't matter what level you're doing it on, you're just problem solving.
Jessica
I would love to talk about your Latina Hollywood project, and if anybody's just listening, it's something definitely worth checking out on your website. The photography that you've done there is so beautiful and powerful, and I know that was early in your career, but it's still incredible. And then to see your later work and know that that's where it came from is really cool.
Jessica
So could you just talk about where that project came from and what it kind of means to you looking back on it?
Leonora
Yeah, so that project was extremely fun for me. Where it came from was college. The the Yale School of Art has an interesting structure to photography, or at least it did decades ago. Yeah, When I was in college, the the Yale School of Art had three photography classes, beginner, intermediate and Advanced, and that was it. And I don't know if it's still the same or if they've created any specialized like lighting classes or anything like that.
Leonora
But the way that it was structured back then was all the classes were project work and you would figure out whatever project you wanted to do and then you would learn technical skills as needed to support your project. So some people would start, you know, they would start doing large format and they would then the whole class would learn like get a tutorial in large format photography so that that person would have the training to take the field camera out and do four by five or whatever, which is, sorry, that's the size of the negative.
Leonora
So it's those old fashioned cameras with the bellows and the hood and got a negative is for four inches by five inches. So you can make a very large prints from the negatives from these cameras. They're beautiful. We did have an eight by ten, but it was a studio camera. So it's just so heavy that you can't really take it out.
Leonora
But if you could, you could have taken photos in a studio with eight by ten if you wanted. All of the classes were set up such that every student would devise a project for the class. And, you know, similar to the the larger format cameras, you would get to learn to use medium format cameras or large format cameras.
Leonora
If somebody had a project. We would also like learn to print color. If somebody wanted to print color, and it was very long ago. So this is not digital printing. And so I was a very shy child, as I as I said, and had always I had actually, you know, known how to use an SLR and had taken film photos since I was like 12.
Leonora
I already knew how to print black and white. By the time I got to college and had always just taken very quiet photos like I would wander about the street, I took really pretty pictures of like dead flowers or like trash ash. Like it was just like, very meditative. I would wander about and just take pictures. So when I was challenged to come up with a project, I thought, well, maybe, maybe I'll branch out and I'll take pictures of people.
Leonora
And so I started doing that and I took some pictures of my friends, which was like the most people I could get.
Leonora
I was too shy to do street photography, though I very much admired Street photographer as well.
Leonora
I'm not too shy to do street photography anymore, but I always thought it was like super cool, but I was way too shy to to do that. And then at some point I started taking photos of myself and I found that to be a really easy way to get used to taking photos of people without sort of the discomfort of social interaction.
Leonora
Yeah. And so so.
Leonora
It was doing self-portraits and then trying to figure out why I was doing self-portraits and what this project actually was, because, you know, it was sort of lacking in anything tying it together and my professor.
Leonora
Was merciless in critique and, but.
Leonora
But very actually, I realized later, like very interested in my development and very supportive, but just one of those like tough love kind of teachers. And so I would I had a hard time with his critiques for a while because they were so like blunt. And I was a very sensitive kid, but he really like he took us to two gallery shows in New York City.
Leonora
We saw some projects that different people had done. He was, you know, we we went two of his classes, went to see shows in the city and there were several or three or four that he had picked because he thought that I would like them and get something out of them. One of them was Nikki Lee, who did these like self-portraits where she physically transformed, but she also, like, merged herself in different communities.
Leonora
So like different like ages, ethnicities, hobbies is like skateboarders, old ladies, like, it's really interesting. It's a really interesting project, But I was I was engaging with other people's work. And eventually I started doing I started like doing this, this introspection. And at the same time, I was doing a class about the representation of race in US mass media and I was also I was about 20 and I was also remembering some of my earliest memories as a child where I just thought I was ugly because I had brown hair and thinking about that and sort of where that idea even came from.
Leonora
Because by this point I had gotten to the point where it wasn't like I didn't think I was the most beautiful person in the world, but I didn't want to be someone else. Right. Like, and I think that's a nice place to get to. And, you know.
Leonora
It's only about 20.
Leonora
Yeah, very natural when you're little, when you're especially when you're going through like middle school and stuff to just like, feel so insecure that you're just like, imagine that, like life would be better if you were somewhere someone else, you know, like you looked a different way or had a different family or whatever it is that you feel insecure about.
Leonora
And so by this point I was like, well, like, you know, even the friends that I had, like, thought were so wonderful, and I still did when I was younger. And and also at that time it was like, but I'm glad I, me, I don't want to be someone else. But looking back at pictures of myself when I was a very little girl, I mean, I was two or three and I would just stare in the mirror or like hating myself was very, very little and thinking like of only I had blond hair, I would be pretty and and then looking at these photos of this just sweet, cute little kid and, like, thinking how
Leonora
sad it was that I felt that way. And, and also, like, then I wouldn't rather be anyone else was kind of a conscious decision that came from that. That was like, I don't want to be 60. Looking back at photos of me when I'm 28 thinking, Why did I hate myself? Like, what a waste of time, You know?
Leonora
And so there was that, and I started thinking about like where that came from. And the only answer I really could come up with was like media images that I was consuming. And I mean, I there were lots of like older ladies, like older Mexican ladies that my family was friends with that looked like me, that it was like I thought they were beautiful.
Leonora
I just it was just like this weird, like cultural messaging that I was getting and I thought about it and I was like, well, this is like, you know, Betty and Veronica and this is Cinderella and the Wicked Stepsisters and it's the people that look like me on screen are were not people that I wanted to be. The characters were not characters that I wanted to be like.
Leonora
And we were very so fun. She's like, athletic and she was like excited about life and she's adventurous and like Veronica just sits around and like, paints her nails boring.
Leonora
And I'm just like, and.
Leonora
So, you know, I, I started to think about that, and that led me to this project of like, why is it that these that these images of these women that I should have seen myself in were like impacting me in such a negative way? Right. And what is the history of this representation of Latinas? And over the course of sort of the 20th century slash early 21st century, very early at that time, how have Latinas been represented?
Leonora
What does that mean to Latinas consuming this media? What does it mean to society and how people perceive us? And also, what does it mean to be that person like that, that celebrity character that's commodified and packaged in this way? And how did they feel about this? And I mean, you see you see varying iterations, and I think a lot of it has to do with like how much agency that person has in their celebrity.
Leonora
But you see it I mean, you see celebrity destroy people all the time. Right? And like Cameron is a great example of someone who just was just it was just so heavy on her. Right. But the of all like, she really flourished. And to be fair, she had like an A-lister like leading lady career. Yeah. Different people. I mean it just I found it really interesting to engage with these people and I started it started to become character work when it became.
Leonora
How did they feel about it? Right. Who is this person underneath this commodity? And then and also another thing that I was interested in were like the socio economic and political circumstances during which these different people were famous and how that impacted the way that they were packaged. And so anyway, I did this series that became my thesis project that was about, oh, and another thing at that time it was like just after the 2000 census and there was all this stuff in the media about like the Latin invasion and the Latin explosion, and it was like Ricky Martin and J.Lo and where are all these people coming from?
Leonora
And, you know, I lived in San Diego my whole life. I was like, what is this madness? Like, we've been here the whole time, Like and and I met people at Yale who were American studies at Major at Yale that didn't know that the American Southwest used to be Mexico. Oh, my gosh. And I was just like, I don't like.
Leonora
We've been here. Like, like I know the border crossed us. Wow.
Leonora
Yeah, it was just it was so that was another thing that was kind of like informing my thinking and, like, shaped this project was like, what is this odd thing that's happening in the media, you know? And, and so anyway, that, that was where it came from. And it became my thesis project. And I looked at different characters and the economic and political circumstances during which they were famous and kind of talked about that and how that influenced the way that they were represented in media.
Leonora
And so it became a project about like Latinas in Hollywood and sort of how that how that was influenced by bigger sort of factors and also how it influenced the people that were packaged this way, how it influenced is the individuals who receive it, both who are Latino and who aren't. And I did a critique of that project, one of the right at the beginning of when I started making sense of what it was and why I was doing self-portraits and what the project was going to become.
Leonora
It was before it had taken shape into my thesis project, but I had decided that it was going to I had envisioned my thesis project and I was like, Oh, this is what I'm going to pitch it was the end of my junior year, and so I knew that was what I was going to do and my photography professor, who was the one who had been so hard on.
Leonora
Me.
Leonora
He I put up this, this series that was like four or five pictures that I had done over spring break that were like the project was really taking shape. And he walked along and looked at them and he just like took this like dramatic pause and he said, you know, I think you're working in the wrong medium. This feels like it should be a film.
Leonora
And I was like.
Leonora
Oh, well, I have an idea. I was like, What a great idea.
Leonora
And it did make perfect sense in terms of like what I was talking about and what I was engaging with. I didn't have time to take an intro film class before I graduated because I was already in like basically film and photography are both so many like lab hours, like you can't really take both at once. And so, so I and I had to do a photography, like I had to do advanced photography twice the next year because I had to get enough pictures printed and like do my, my thesis project.
Leonora
So I, I wasn't able to do a film class until after I graduated, but then I took a an intro film class after I was done and had been working for a while and decided that I was ready to apply for an MFA and wanted to figure out what I was going to do for that and figured I should like try filmmaking before I just like jump into an MFA.
Leonora
Program like, you know, it seems like a good idea, but I don't know if I.
Leonora
Would actually like it in practice. Yeah, and then I did, and I loved it. And I discovered that it it combined like all the wonderful parts of theater with, like, all the wonderful parts of photography. And I was like, This is it. This is like what I what I'm supposed to do.
Jessica
Oh, that's so beautiful. And you already had all of the movement art side of things as well. So taking the photography into a moving medium makes so much sense.
Leonora
It was, Yeah, I think that was that's one of the things that was because lighting was super easy for me because with the, the Latino Hollywood project, I was working on films. It was early. It was, you know, 2000, 2001 wasn't digital, wasn't it what it is now. And so this is all still film photography. I was using Self-timer and really crummy clamp lights, but I was recreating pictures.
Leonora
And so it was like I was like working with like angles and color and different stuff. And so all that stuff I had figured out by lighting myself in, especially like these were self-portraits that I was doing alone. And so I had to learn pretty quickly not to mess up because I was doing them on film. So I had to take them back and process the film and then print the film.
Leonora
And it was, you know, two or three work weeks of pre-production to put together a photo. And then if I messed it up, then I'm going back to pre-production again. So you learn pretty fast when you lose three weeks.
Leonora
Right, from a mistake.
Leonora
And so I had I had taught myself, basically taught myself to light that way. I mean, I learned a lot more in graduate school about different lights and tools and stuff. But like, I got the concept from that because I was lighting myself blind. And so and I knew film really well because I had been by the time I went to grad school, already been working with films since I don't know, 15 years or something.
Leonora
And so I understood film quite well. And so movement was the thing to introduce. It was the thing that I hadn't thought about before. And it was, I do remember like putting conscious effort into that in the way that I put a lot of conscious effort into communicating a story in a visual image without using words. There was a lot that I wanted to say with my with my thesis project, and it's so tempting just to put words in a photograph.
Leonora
And I would spend a lot of time just kind of a journal writing like just sort of like, how can I express this without words? And I would like write out just like different idea, just brainstorm journaling of like what it's like, what symbols could express X, Y, or Z thing, and how could I put these little like Easter eggs in the picture that would give people clues as to what the picture was about.
Leonora
And it was a very I mean, that was a great skill for being a filmmaker because now it comes to me so naturally. But it is an it is a the skill is something like you have to work on is is a visual communication. And so when it came like by the time I was reading scripts and trying to visualize like how to represent stories, the idea of communicating a story in a single frame was already something that I had been working on for ten years.
Leonora
And so that came pretty naturally to me. But it was like, okay, then what do we how do we move? How do we move? The camera? To tell a story was like the single frame was like very clear. And so I remember in a similar way thinking, okay, how does how can the camera movement support this? It wasn't intuitive right away.
Leonora
Yeah. And I had to like, think about that. The part that is intuitive is handheld.
Jessica
Of.
Leonora
Okay, dancing's it's like me being in the scene. And so I think in a way that's why it feels so comfortable to me is like, it's like acting. It's like dancing. It's like I'm in the scene and I can improvise and spontaneously interact with the actors and go where the scene wants me to go without having the restrictions of Dolly tracks or whatever.
Leonora
Yeah, Slider, Like I'm not stuck. I can like, just be in the moment.
Jessica
I love it.
Leonora
Yeah.
Jessica
Oh, well, with all of the beautiful things you've talked about across so many areas, what would you like my audience to do as a creator's challenge?
Leonora
Okay, so my creator's challenge is exactly what I was just talking about, is to tell a story in a single picture and don't use words. So craft a picture. You can whatever that is to you, but try to communicate a message with just images I like that.
Jessica
I like that so much. I want to do it.
Leonora
I learned a lot from doing that. Yeah.
Jessica
Yeah. And I will say again, like check out her website because your photography is so beautiful and I've loved working on films with you, but I think that's a quick and easy way to see your esthetic, which is so strong and powerful and moody and beautiful. It's really, really powerful. Thank you. And where would you like people to find you?
Leonora
You can find me on my websites.
Jessica
They don't have that in this ad.
Leonora
And on Instagram. I'm not I'm not the best marketer of myself, but I post on Instagram. Leonora makes movies.
Jessica
Beautiful. Thank you so much for coming and chatting with me. It was wonderful to talk to you too. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Join the community and share your creative challenges on Instagram and Facebook at Creators Cafe by Kiko Labs and also check out my website www.kikalabs.com to sign up for the mailing list.
Jessica
So you always know when a new podcast is released and to check out my coaching and digital courses to help you be a more confident and joyful creator.
