5 Questions with José Andrés Cardona
“In Color,” by director José Andrés Cardona, throws together a fleeing woman in danger and a baby-faced barber’s apprentice at a 24 hour barber shop for a night of unexpected connections. We asked Cardona how the project began, its barber shop setting, and the unique mix of tones…
1) Can you talk a little bit about your background, and how you first got interested in making movies?
Like a lot of other filmmakers, I started out casually as a kid. My family loved the movies and made going to the theater a weekly ritual. I started with a polaroid camera when I could barely hold onto it; and when I was 8 or 9, I began making stop motion shorts out of legos with my older brother.
Once I got into high school, I got a video camera of my own and started filming my friends and family all the time, cutting together little documentaries about them.
I loved movies and filmmaking was always a hobby, but after I got into NYU for film, I received a lot of encouragement there that kept me going.
2) What came first for you with this film? A character, or a tone, the location, the story? And then how did you build off that?
It was definitely the location. I’ve been getting my hair cut by Eric Aleman at King of Kings in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, since 2012. As part of the Six Short Films collective with Hunt Beaty and Wesley Wingo, I was up to direct another short - and like all of them - “In Color” was largely reverse-engineered.
While sitting in Eric’s chair last fall, I asked him nonchalantly if he’d ever let me shoot something in his shop. He was pretty supportive and agreed right away - probably thinking I’d never take him up on it. From there, I started thinking about how I could frame a short in a barbershop.
King of Kings is open every day except Sunday, so I could either do a one day shoot (definitely not enough time) or two overnight shoots. So that immediately brought this two-part question to mind: “Why would a barbershop be open all night, and why would anyone need a haircut in the middle of the night?” Everything came from that.
3) There’s a really unique tone here. It feels kind of out of time - in some ways it feels very old-fashioned, and in others quite modern. How did you create this atmosphere? Do you see this as belonging to an age, and/or how do you see the juxtapositions?
I thought it would be fun to start in an archetypical barbershop - uniforms, oldies music, the works - and bend the world a little bit with our nighttime setting and some surreal elements. It would be framed by modernity, but exist in a world of its own.
4) Do you watch other movies, and/or draw directly from them as you prepare to shoot? Like do you try to mimic shots from other movies or feelings from other movies? If so, examples from this film?
I’m sure I do a lot of this inadvertently, but it’s usually just going with a gut feeling. One reference for this film specifically - more for vibe than anything else - was the ending of The Graduate.
5) I love your cast. There’s a real intimacy and tenderness between your two leads. How did you find them, and how did you build that chemistry?
We found Rebecca and Chase on Breakdown Express - believe it or not. Rebecca came in and was the only person that immediately just got it. And Chase is very different than what I originally had in mind; but when he read, he had so much charisma and presence. He made it very hard not to cast him.
Bonus Question: What comes next for you?
Well, this is the sixth short film from our Six Short FIlms project, so the model for these shorts is coming to an end. I plan on making another short in the upcoming months, have begun writing a feature, and continue to work with, encourage, and receive encouragement from my usual band of co-conspirators.
Contact Info:
Instagram: @jacardona
Websites: https://www.sixshortfilms.com, http://www.jacardona.com
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/jacardona
Twitter: @jacardona