Share

Director Pippa Bianco

Cinéfondation, Festival de Cannes 2015

“I made the film at a time when there were a lot of similar cases about explicit viral videos in the U.S. I was familiar with those stories, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to look at those issues in more of a private, moment-to-moment way, rather than through the black and white lens you get when you see the stories from a macro-level.”- director, Pippa Bianco

GFM:
I think everybody who watches your film can relate to it, not just high school kids. It’s everybody’s worst nightmare. What led you to explore this topic?

Pippa:
I think to some degree we’ve all had an experience of being looked at, having this kind of “public persona”, and the amplification of that humiliation when it’s on a digital platform. I had worked as a hotline operator for R.A.I.N.N, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. I was also in college at a time when a lot of similar cases were cropping up, so I think my decision to create this project was an intersection of those two experiences, which made me want to see this story told from a different perspective.

GFM:
You have a really interesting cast and Taissa Farmiga was wonderful in the lead role. How did you assemble your cast?

Pippa:
Well, my first job on a film set was PA’ing on a film called Higher Ground, and that also happened to be the first film Taissa acted in, and one of the first films my producer, Carly Hugo, produced. So we all met on that set in upstate New York. I think because it was such a new and special experience, we stayed close.

We had a brilliant casting director, Lauren Grey, who encouraged me to think of who I wanted to cast in the film, and to write a personal letter asking them if they would consider doing it. We got very lucky! They were all very seasoned actors, and all much more experienced than I am. I think it was more of a collaborative experience, and they all needed and wanted different kinds of direction. I just tried to be respectful of that.

GFM:
I read that you successfully funded Share with an Indiegogo campaign. Do you have any crowdfunding tips you can share?

Pippa:
That was for most of the budget. It’s fantastic. It’s never that fun to ask people for money, but I think if you care a lot about what you’re doing, then it ripples out and amplifies. We did start getting a lot of donations from strangers. It started with our immediate friends and family who were very generous, and then it just went from there. People seemed to respond well to what we were trying to do, and support that on a fundamental level.

GFM:
What does being accepted into the Cannes Cinefondation competition mean to you and what have you got planned for the future?

Pippa:
So many of the films I was thinking about when I made Share, like Benny’s Video and Morvern Callar, were all Cannes films, so I was in complete shock. It means we were very lucky; there are so many excellent films that don’t get in. For my next project, I’m mainly concentrating on the feature version of Share, which will be more of a thriller/mystery than this one.