NEW PERSPECTIVE

Rather than focusing on the trauma, Sorry, Baby aims to understand how someone deals with being dehumanised following sexual assault. DP Mia Cioffi Henry reveals how she worked with director Eva Victor to offer a fresh viewpoint and tell a powerful story.

A debut writer-director who wants to act in their film – in the lead no less – is always going to raise concerns. Can they handle all that responsibility? Which is why when cinematographer Mia Cioffi Henry was asked to workshop two scenes from Eva Victor’s startling script for Sorry, Baby, it felt like a vital part pf the process. “It was really just to see if Eva wanted to direct – and could direct and act at the same time,” she explains, over coffee at the Cannes Film Festival, where the film has just closed Director’s Fortnight.

Given Cioffi Henry is Head of Cinematography at NYU Tisch’s Graduate Film programme, this tutelage was right in her wheelhouse. “[It was about] being able to talk through what is a shot, what is a lens, what does camera movement do? What is the way to visualise a story? How do we strip back the dialogue and think about the visuals? And so it was like a little mini-film school workshop.” After that, soft prep began in August 2023, before pre-production got underway the following January.

A year later, Sorry, Baby enjoyed its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where Victor won the Waldo Salt Award for screenwriting. The confessional story sees Victor play Agnes, a college professor who endures a sexual assault. “It wasn’t…preying on the trauma but trying to understand how a human deals with being dehumanised,” Cioffi Henry comments. “And I think that it continues to be extremely relevant to audiences. It helps people see another side of things.”

Cioffi Henry elected to shoot using ARRIs Alexa Mini LF. “We looked at the Alexa 65. I had tested that. And as much as I was desperate to shoot on that camera, it was just too heavy, too big,” she says, all too aware of the cramped interiors they were planning to shoot in. Filming on digital was also crucial, given Victor’s relative inexperience. “I never turn down film, but I knew we wanted to be able to have playback,” she explains. “We wanted to be able to evaluate the shot, evaluate the scene.”

Cioffi Henry coupled the Mini LF with ARRI DNA lenses, which she tested during the location scout, and settled on shooting using 2.39 aspect ratio. “Usually you think about that for landscapes or for exteriors as your primary but we knew we were going to be in these very tiny spaces, and we wanted to widen them as much as possible. Or at least have enough real estate on the lens to play with some blocking and play with some movement.”

Balancing act

With so many interior scenes – including Agnes’ house, a real location in Ipswich, Massachusetts – Cioffi Henry used natural lighting, and LEDs to enhance. “We didn’t want the film to feel slick, but we didn’t want it to feel too handmade either. So it was really striking that balance,” she says, revealing that Kelly Reichardt’s 2016 drama Certain Women was a touchstone. “We were looking at the natural lighting [in that film]; always placing people by windows to use that natural light and let someone turn away from the camera and then turn back.”

Cioffi Henry also opted to shoot with the camera mounted. “I think handheld felt a little expected. It felt too indie-emotional for what this was, and we wanted to have this slightly grander feeling.” Certain moments, however, called for a Steadicam rig, operated by Dean Egan – notably the crunch scene when Agnes leaves the house of her abuser, a continuous shot, as night falls. Lighting it was particularly tricky. “We didn’t have balloons. We didn’t have Condors,” she explains. “We were just literally knocking on doors asking people if we could rig lights on their back deck.”

Egan was the operator throughout the shoot, but there were times when Cioffi Henry took on the task. “Literally they were so tiny, the spaces, the camera and I had the same footprint. I was sitting on the camera, the camera was sitting on me. So it was really trying to be that third eye in the room, not in a very subjective way, but we didn’t have space for anything else. We didn’t have space to lengthen, and we wanted to lean into that kind of closeness and feeling, like you’re hanging on Agnes’ every word.”

To grade the film, Cioffi Henry worked with her good friend Marcy Robinson, a colourist based at the company Nice Shoes. “She really comes out of physical film. She worked in a dark room developing stills, that was her background. So most of the work I’ve done with her has been celluloid, and she just approaches things in a very similar way to me, because I came up on celluloid as well, and I’m always trying to maintain the principles I think are most important about exposure. And it was just really wonderful to build the subtlety. I mean, she really puts the finishing touches on the film.”

What is clear is how Sorry, Baby wasn’t just another job for Cioffi Henry. “It’s something that I feel closely related to, and can find myself in and bring myself to, as a woman, as a person of colour, as a black woman cinematographer,” she argues. “I think it’s really important to be able to not be an invisible eye, but to really bring my own version of the gaze. Because I think we’re really redefining what is the female gaze. As we learn under the patriarchy of filmmaking from the last 100 years, how do we define what is the female gaze? So I feel very responsible in continuing that conversation.”