Whilst representation matters on the screen, it’s also incredibly important for this to be reflected behind the camera too. In 2022, women made up 24% of directors, writers, producers, editors, and cinematographers who worked on the top 250 grossing films of the year.
Breaking that down, only 7% of cinematographers were women, 21% of editors were women, and 19% were writers. Producers (31%) and executive producers (25%) had slightly higher statistics, with actors-turned-producers like Margot Robbie, Emma Stone, and Reese Witherspoon bringing attention to ‘women’s stories‘. Interestingly, in the same year, women made up nearly 40% of lead actors in the highest-grossing films, whilst only 37% of women in films actually spoke.
Change is happening slowly, as research showed that in the top 250 films with at least one female director, substantially more women were employed in key behind-the-scenes roles than films with exclusively male directors (for example, women directors were found to hire 68% female writers in comparison to 8% for films directed by men). Maybe Witherspoon’s naïve remark that ‘women’s stories matter’ is actually not so naïve?
In honour of all the Incredible work women do behind the camera, Filmworkz have gathered our top women in post production who don’t always get the recognition they deserve.
Jennifer Lame
No stranger to editing some of Hollywood’s most exciting blockbusters – like Manchester by the Sea (2016), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), Midsommar (2019), and Marriage Story (2019) – Jennifer Lame was at the forefront of editing one of the last year’s biggest releases: Oppenheimer (2023).
Lauded for its sustained tension and dynamic use of shots, how the film was edited is a crucial component to its success – this was recognised at this year’s Academy Awards with nomination for Lame for Best Editing. She revealed that Christopher Nolan had a very strong vision of what he wanted: ‘actually, working within a structure can sometimes be just as challenging as having the freedom to move things around. Chris is one of those directors that is very specific. He knows what he wants, he commits to it so hard, his scripts are specific and detailed… For Oppenheimer, everything is scripted, right down to specific sounds or montages he wanted to use’.
Gabriela Plazas
Restoration in film is an often overlooked aspect of the post production industry, and estimates on women in this sector echo the official statistics on broader gender disparities in film. Gabriela Plazas, one of the most exciting women restoration artists, not only painstakingly restores damaged and ruined footage with tools like Phoenix, but is on a mission to save her country’s heritage. With no support from the government and no centralised archives, she has established ‘El Plan Recuperar’ project to protect Argentina’s film history.
Plazas says that 80% of silent Argentinian films are lost, and over 50% of films from Argentina’s most prolific period of filmmaking between 1914 and 1960 is also lost. What survives is still often in poor condition, thanks to 20 years of military rule and poor general storage conditions.
El Plan Recuperar’s ethos is ‘to value our cinema, so that the works of its creators, as audiovisual authors, can continue to exist and compete, on an equal footing, with the other technically updated works, generating the full potential of their cultural and economic benefits on the most diverse screens and media’.Plazas says that she gets a lot of joy working on these projects: ‘these forgotten films who are out of circulation for being too old for the current market – it’s another life for that film! Now they’re being shown in festivals all over the world and bought by Amazon, Netflix, and they have a second chance to be seen’.
Thelma Schoonmaker
When people think of Martin Scorsese, they might as well also think of Thelma Schoonmaker. Working together as a duo for over five decades after meeting at film school, Schoonmaker is titan in the world of editing, having won three Academy Awards for Best Editing (out of nine nominations), two Bafta awards (out of eleven nominations) and four ACE Eddie Awards, and a Bafta Fellowship in 2019. She began working with Scorsese in 1967 on his debut film Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967), with her most recent project Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).
Defying convention, Schoonmaker had a rough start to her career, as she was prohibited from working on feature films until she became a member of the Motion Picture Editors Guild, despite having been an Oscar nominee for editing Woodstock (1970). The union’s entry required five years as an apprentice and three as an assistant, which she found ridiculous: ‘I just couldn’t see why I, who had been a full editor and had been nominated for an Academy Award, should suddenly have to become an apprentice. …And of course, they couldn’t see the sense of why I, who had never been in the union all those years and had never paid dues all those years and had never served my time in their sense, should be allowed as a full editor. So it was quite understandable on both sides. It was just insane’. She wouldn’t be able to work in a formal capacity for some years, until a rushed deadline on Taxi Driver (1976) meant Schoonmaker was brought in officially to finish the job in time. She was finally accepted into the union by the 80s.
After the death of her husband, fellow filmmaker Michael Powell, Schoonmaker dedicated herself to preserving his many classic films like The Red Shoes, and honouring his legacy. No doubt, this interest crosses over with Scorsese’s own Film Foundation, which works to protect the history and preservation of film, who have been known to use Phoenix.
Shonda Rhimes
Shonda Rhimes is a pioneering force in the world of television production, recognized for her groundbreaking work as a writer and producer. Perhaps best known for her creation of hit TV series like Grey’s Anatomy (2005-present), Private Practice (2007-2013), Scandal (2012-2019), (leading her to become the first woman to create three television dramas that achieved the milestone of over 100 episodes) and How to Get Away with Murder (2014-2020), Rhimes’ ability to craft complex narratives and portray strong, multifaceted female characters has earned her widespread acclaim and numerous awards, including five Emmy nominations, a Golden Globe and special honours at the British Academy Television Awards and International Emmy Awards.
More recently, she executively produced the hit Netflix series Bridgerton (2020-present), its spinoff Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (2023) and Inventing Anna (2022), and has since become one of the richest female entertainers in America, with a networth of $250 million. Throughout her career, she has been a vocal advocate for representation both in front of and behind the cameras, consistently championing the importance of telling diverse stories and providing opportunities for underrepresented voices in the entertainment industry. Rhimes’ production company, Shondaland, privileges inclusive storytelling after overcoming systemic barriers and discrimination in a male and white dominated industry. She remarked that the film industry has a case of ‘amnesia all the time’ because ‘every time a female-driven project is made and succeeds, somehow it’s a fluke’.
Julia Ducournau
The body horror guru, Julia Ducournau, is one of the most subversive women directors of our generation. Growing up with parents who are doctors (which she credits as the origin of her fascination with the human body) created a foundation from which she looks at our relationship with our own flesh and bodily impulses, some of the central themes in her breath-takingly shocking psychological feature and short films. Pushing the limits of what an audience can watch, Raw (2016) is an ironic take on a coming of age film, with cannibalistic tendencies that are not for the faint of heart, but was lauded for Ducournau’s direction and screenplay.
Titane (2021) dazzled the cinematic world yet again, with a murdering autophile that has to pretend to be a fireman and experimenting with gender presentations today, and was awarded with the Palme D’Or. She was the second female director to have won, as well as the first female filmmaker to win solo. Often frustrated at being categorised as a *woman in film*, she responded to her historic Palme D’Or win by suggesting ‘maybe we [are] entering an era where things would be more equal in acknowledging the work of people beyond their gender’.
Molly Manning Walker
This British director and cinematographer has been making waves recently with her quasi-thriller coming of age film How To Have Sex (2023) which won Un Certain Regard award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and with lead actress Mia Mckenna-Bruce winning the EE Bafta Rising Star Award. Whilst she is phenomenal directing a scene, her cinematic vision is equally impressive: she worked on Scrapper (2023), which won the 2023 Sundance Grand Jury Prize in World Cinema, as its cinematographer. Set in a council estate as the protagonist – a young girl living alone after mother dies – Manning Walker defies classist expectations of a dark and gritty atmosphere, instead opting for colorful and soft hues to translate a sense of childish wonder still.
She explained that ‘we wanted to break away from the typical estate film by shooting in Anamorphic, to make it feel heightened, that was a new adventure for me…The 4:3 was meant to feel like the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of the kids’ brains and when we used zooms, it was to highlight them quickly scanning and trying to find the information in the situation’.
Aline Sinquin
Although women typically see a broader range of color, few still hold the top positions in color in film. In efforts to combat this, Aline Sinquin founded Five One Color in 2016, the first female founded color grading company in New York. Soon after, she was invited to be a member of Free The Bid, a non-profit organization that aims to level out the playing field in film and boasts a roster of some of the top women in film. Sinquin said that color grading is ‘a male dominated industry, but it is starting to be more open to women… I feel really proud. There are not so many females who lead post production companies in NYC’.
On joining Free the Bid, she said this organisation began ‘to alert the industry to the fact that women were being hired 3 or 4 times less than men’, and offers support for women, by ‘help[ing] them to get jobs in the industry and share their experience and knowledge’. Renowned for work on beauty campaigns like L’Oréal, Chanel, Kenzo, Dior, Prada, and Louis Vuitton, she has also been a lead colorist on countless TV series and films that have been nominated for awards at film festivals.