Charlotte filmmaking sisters are not deterred by Sundance shutout
As I walked into Trade & Lore, I was met by the brilliant Frederick sisters, who had already taken a seat at a corner table. This space, recently deemed the most beautiful coffee shop in North Carolina by Architectural Digest, is a breeding ground for creativity and connection, something I immediately found while sitting with Kyle and Erin. As former Not Just Coffee managers who have taken hiatus from the coffee business, this was the perfect place to sit and chat.
With a timeline of around four more months, the sisters are in post-production of their independent film, “Among Mountain Crags”. The premise of the movie is one of a woman leaving her mountain town with a stranger whose sinister side soon begins to show. However, I was not there to talk to them about plot. I was there to talk about their vision.
It’s easy to assume that all things women-run are statement pieces — making a point to their male counterparts that “anything you can do I can do better” or at the very least, just as well. What they actually set out to do was to just be good filmmakers.
“I’d seen men do it,” Kyle said of leaving her job in Charlotte to pursue directing on the West Coast. “They’d work on short films and move on to features but in LA, this seems to only work for men. So why is it not happening for women?”
Kyle posed this question almost rhetorically, but is subtly answering it through her work, making it happen for herself even when surrounded by primarily male colleagues. When Kyle started her journey, she was in a small class of about 50 aspiring filmmakers, only six of whom were women.
“The movie marketplace reflects who holds power,” Kyle went on to say, but she added she is slowly seeing a shift in the number of women in the industry.
Holding an MFA from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, Kyle has worked on a handful of films and has won numerous awards. Erin has focused on screenwriting through New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and has been a Fellow at the Sundance Institute Intensive Screenwriting Lab.
Erin is bold and blunt, brave in her portrayal of the lead character and in her writing style. Crafting a film she calls “painterly” that she wrote with the idea of her sister as director, she is clear about one thing: “I don’t want to be a ‘female filmmaker’; I just want to be good at what I do.”
With a crew of up to 20 and often as few as five, the sisters took 18 days to film in the mountains of North Carolina, including a day at Crowders Mountain, and in West Virginia, where the majority of the film was shot.
Their sister, Kara, quit her job at Facebook in D.C. to work odd jobs with them, often taking on the role of boom operator.
“She became very intense about sound,” Erin said.
Charlotte’s own Tanner Morita is composing the music, while crowd funding is still underway for song licensing and in-depth sound mixes. It’s currently in stereo, but they are hoping for a 5:1 sound mix. For all the non-audio nerds out there, that just means they want it to be better.
“We’re very close,” Kyle said. “It’s very exciting and scary and we are now in the more business-y part of the film, putting on our ‘producer hats’ and marketing this film for the right audience.”
Aligning with their boldness and passion, they submitted to Sundance, as was the original plan. Their rough assembly of the piece was not accepted, but the writer-director duo plan to submit to various festivals once the film is completed this spring.
“Our ultimate plan is to have it available on demand and in select theaters after our festival run,” Kyle said. “We would love to screen it at regional festivals in the Southeast in that timeframe.”
Erin adds, “We’re hoping to include a couple of festivals that are more local to Charlotte in our festival run so [local] people can see it.”
Both are clearly passionate about the story itself, wanting to shape it and form it into something beautiful.
“It’s easy to pursue ‘film’ instead of ‘story’,” Kyle said. “But if it’s the right story, you’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen. It’s good, beautiful, and we are confident people will enjoy watching it.”
Photos: Liz Logan
This story was originally published February 5, 2018 at 8:00 PM with the headline "Charlotte filmmaking sisters are not deterred by Sundance shutout."