By Robert Goldrich

This month writer/director Sian Heder’s feature film CODA is being released theatrically and will make its streaming debut on Apple TV+. CODA debuted earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim, winning four awards: The Grand Jury Prize, the Audience Award, Best Director and an Ensemble Acting Award. After opening the festival and launching a bidding war, CODA was bought by Apple for a record breaking $25 million.

The film stars Emilia Jones as Ruby who is a CODA, the abbreviation for Child of Deaf Adult. She is the only hearing person in her deaf family which finds its fishing business in jeopardy. Ruby becomes torn between pursuing her love of music and her fear of abandoning her parents. The film’s cast also includes deaf actors Tony Kotsur, Daniel Durant and Marlee Matlin as CODA underscores the need for diversity in Hollywood, showing the artistry of these performers, pushing back against the common practice of hearing actors often being cast in these roles.

Heder’s reach also extends to television. She is currently executive producer and showrunner on the series Little America for Apple TV+. Back in January Little America received a Film Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best New Scripted Series.

Heder previously wrote and produced for three seasons on the Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, receiving multiple WGA nominations for her work. Her other television writing credits include Men of a Certain Age, which earned her a Peabody Award. 

Peabody judges honored Men of a Certain Age, a TNT Originals series, for presenting male characters as adults with real problems and real friends. A jurors’ statement read, “For creating ‘real’ men whose problems are more likely to be solved with a good joke at someone else’s expense than with superpowers or pistols, Men of a Certain Age receives a Peabody Award.”

Heder has directed episodes of Netflix’s GLOW, Orange is the New Black, Hulu’s The Path, and Little America. Her first short film, Mother, was awarded the Cinefondation Jury Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Her debut feature film, Tallulah, starring Elliot Page and Alison Janney, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, was released as a Netflix original, and earned a Humanitas Prize nomination in 2017.

Recently Heder connected with Independent Media–the production company founded by executive producer Susanne Preissler–for representation as a director of commercials and branded content.

SHOOT: Provide some backstory as to what inspired CODA and the hurdles you cleared to bring it to fruition.

Heder: CODA was based on a French film called La Famille Bélier. I had just been at Sundance with my first feature Tallulah in 2016 and Lionsgate was looking for a filmmaker to make an American version of the movie. They wanted someone who could honor the premise of the original film, but also find a way make it their wholly their own. I grew up going to Gloucester, Massachusetts every summer as a kid and knew about the struggles that the fishing industry faced there. I thought it was a really interesting backdrop for a story. I went in and pitched them on this idea of making this a blue collar fishing family in Gloucester who was struggling to hang onto their livelihood. They got very excited about my vision for the movie and the script went into development. When Patrick Wachsberger left Lionsgate, the project also left the studio and the movie was produced independently by Pathé and Vendome. 

So that was one of the hurdles in making the movie. It started out as a studio project and after a while it became clear that it wasn’t going to happen there. I was lucky to have producers in Phillippe Rousselet and Patrick Wachsberger who really believed in the movie and were willing to go out on a limb and finance it independently with brilliant deaf actors in these roles and Emilia Jones, a newcomer, in the lead.

The other challenge was that I set the film in Gloucester and really wanted to shoot in the place I wrote it for (which so rarely happens these days). There was a lot of talk of moving it to Canada because of the tax credit, but it was important for me to shoot it on the North Shore. The town really felt like a character in the movie, with a strong personality and visual specificity. I felt lucky that when we got to make the movie, we were in the place that sparked it. It added wonderful texture to the story. 

SHOOT: What was (were) the biggest creative challenge(s) that CODA posed to you as a filmmaker?

Heder: I would say the three areas that required me to be the most inventive were the fishing, the music and the ASL (American Sign Language). 

The first time I met with my marine coordinator, Joe Boreland, he said to me, “Couldn’t they be lobstermen?” because it’s something you can shoot close to shore in the harbor. I had written that this family were draggers – ground fishermen – and in order to shoot that kind of fishing, we had to go out into federal waters and actually fish. It seemed like an insane undertaking to take a crew of 100 people out to sea to shoot, but ground fishing is visually dramatic and it was not something I’d seen on film before. Also, it was important to me to remain authentic to the hardship that that particular group of fishermen is facing. So, we took my cast to sea with local fishermen and taught them to work the boat and fish so we could shoot almost documentary style on the water. 

It was an incredible undertaking. We had a flotilla traveling three miles out to sea, doing boat to boat transfers in 5 foot waves. We had a tiny, rusted fishing vessel as our picture boat, an open camera boat with a 50 foot techno on it, multiple safety and shuttle boats and a massive crew ship. It was really like a Navy armada going out to sea every day. And we were at the mercy of the weather and the waves and all of that. I was lucky to have a marine team who pulled off what I wanted creatively and managed to keep everyone safe in the process. 

The music was another challenge and intimidating to me as I didn’t have a musical background. I had an amazing music team in Marius Devries and Nick Baxter. We worked with a real choir from Berklee called Pitch Slapped on the arrangements and then folded our actors into this choir. Emilia was not a trained singer before we made the movie. She had to take singing lessons and work with a vocal coach to open up her voice and give her confidence to deliver on set. It was important to me to capture the performances live, with all the flaws and sound of the room and the authentic feeling of being in the experience. But doing so became its own recording challenge – particularly when you’re having someone sing out on a fishing boat with the sound of the engines and seagulls and an uncontrolled environment. 

The ASL initially seemed like it would be a challenge, but instead gave us an incredible opportunity to really focus on communication on set. I was directing actors in a language that I didn’t speak fluently. There were of course technical challenges: figuring out how many interpreters we needed to have on set, where those interpreters needed to be, making an extra vocal track with an interpreter by the monitors so the editor could make sure he was cutting the signed scenes correctly. But the additional focus on set communication was so beneficial for how our set ran in general.

I had two ASL masters, Alexandria Wailes and Anne Tomasetti, who were key not only in doing the translation of the script, but in working with the actors – both the deaf cast and Emilia – to create the specificity of this family and how they signed. They were also important collaborators for me in representing deaf culture in an authentic way. And I had wonderful interpreters on set who were tireless in making sure the set flowed.

Then, it was about directing and finding a relationship with my actors. And I didn’t want to rely solely on an interpreter to do that. I had been studying ASL and though I wasn’t great, after the first day, I agreed with my cast that I would just sign with them directly. If anything was unclear, we would have interpreter standing right next to me who could jump in and clarify anything, but it was important to me to have that direct connection. I also wanted my actors to have access to my expressions and whatever tone I was conveying on my face while giving directing notes. I learned to sign very quickly out of necessity and we forged very strong actor/director relationships.

We even found ourselves signing when there weren’t deaf actors on set. Emilia and I would be signing together because she would be up on a cliff and I would be down in the quarry and I could give an acting note from 100 feet away without having to use a walkie talkie. Or my AD and I were communicating from boat to boat in sign language because it was a much easier way to deliver information.  It’s really a brilliant set language that I might have to bring onto every movie that I do!

SHOOT: Tallulah made its mark at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and this year CODA won the Dramatic U.S. Grand Jury Prize, the Directing and Audience Awards. Would you reflect a bit on what Sundance means to you personally and professionally–and particularly your experience this year when the pandemic had the festival going virtual, making it a Sundance unlike any other before.

Heder: I premiered my first film Tallulah at Sundance in 2016. And going to the festival was an incredible experience (albeit with a 2 year old and a newborn, which put a bit of a damper on my partying). There was nothing quite like premiering at the Eccles and looking out at that massive audience, full of adrenaline as I introduced my movie for the first time. And Tallulah had such a warm reception, it was a beautiful way to launch the film and my career.

Since then Sundance has been so supportive. I did the FilmTwo program, which helps writer/directors develop their second feature and they have included me in their alumni events and mentoring. It’s a really nurturing community of independent filmmakers.

I think they pulled off something amazing with their virtual festival this year. They managed to create a festival that had a lot of energy despite the fact that we were all in our homes. So while there was a little bit of heartbreak knowing that I wasn’t going to watch the movie in the Eccles with that crowd of people, it was a pretty indelible experience to watch it on my couch with my husband and kids, but still manage to feel so connected to the audiences and the event. 

SHOOT: It’s said that one experience informs another. What was your biggest takeaway or lessons learned from your experience on CODA? 

Heder: I think I took two lessons away from CODA. The biggest one for me was to trust my own instincts about my story and why I was telling it, starting with fighting to authentically cast deaf actors in those roles. I knew what was going to be creatively best for the film and the importance of surrounding myself with the right collaborators. I had to fight the right fights along the way and I’m so glad that I did. I stuck to my guns and knew when I wasn’t willing to compromise if I felt it was going to hurt the movie.

The other thing is that I had to evolve the way that I worked and, specifically, the way that I worked with actors. It was really beneficial for me as a director to realize that I have so many tools at my disposal to communicate with. To challenge the idea of spoken English being my main tool. It was a powerful experience making the movie and having to be creative about how I relayed my ideas. In particular, discussing ideas with my cast and using my body to do that. I think it’s opened me up in a big way to finding other ways to express myself and craft performance. It was exciting to step outside of my comfort zone in terms of the patterns and rhythms that I was used to and find a new way to work.

SHOOT: You recently connected with Independent Media for representation in the commercialmaking and branded content arena. What attracts you to the ad filmmaking sector and why did you gravitate to Independent Media as the shop to handle you in these endeavors?

Heder: I think commercials create incredible opportunities for directors to play. You can explore different kinds of shooting and filmmaking and storytelling in short form. It’s always fun as a filmmaker to push yourself into exploration and challenge yourself in your approach to shooting. That’s exciting to me. 

I connected with Susanne Preissler creatively. I felt like she would be a great partner to dip my toe into this world and she understands who I am as a filmmaker, which will lead her to find the right projects for me.

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