he's hearing in his head.
EN: From the beginning David had a pretty clear vision. He had a conversation with the cinematographer and he was like forget the equipment. [He wanted] real time, all real time and it works wonderful, all those claustrophobic moments. It was definitely a dance trying to figure out the right shots, cutting into the right thing. As the movie goes on, it kind of speeds up in intensity and you slowly bring your foot on the gas. In the beginning you're holding on shots, [but] by the end your rapid fire editing every half second, every second you're cutting to two different shots. Then sound design. We had an incredible team that did an excellent job of making sure people felt the hits, the noises, we wanted people to really feel and hear all of those noises that Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. must've gone through himself.
PP: Did either of you, in creating this story, talk with the family members at all?
DM: The Chamberlain family’s really been involved since the very, very beginning because it wouldn't have felt right to move forward with a film like this without having the family’s blessing. Kenneth Chamberlain Jr who is the son of Chamberlain Sr has been involved since the very, very beginning. The script was really derived from the conversations that we were having with him, the documentation that he was able to send us, the news reports that we were able to find. Members of the Chamberlain family came out to the set and met the cast and crew [which gave them a] deeper sense of responsibility that this is a real story this and not just completely from our imaginations.
PP: I’m curious do you think that this same situation would have happened in the same way now as it did ten years ago? Do you think there's been any changes in mental health understanding from a police officer’s perspective? Is there better training and understanding?
DM: I don't know if the outcome would have been the same. You see incidents like this, you hear all the time about people suffering from mental health issues many of whom are also people of color who are very disproportionately likely to be injured or killed by police officers. That being said, there are positive steps that are beginning to happen. There are more departments and more cities mandating for medical emergency calls or mental health disturbance calls, that the first responders are no longer police officers. The first responders would be trained social workers or medical personnel, paramedics, the kinds of people who are really more appropriate to respond to these kinds of things. We can't necessarily ask police officers to not only be police officers but psychologists [or] social workers as well. The question could be asked are we training police officers adequately, are police departments recruiting the right types of people for those jobs, and also are we expecting too much of a police officer? Are they expected to handle too wide a variety of calls? They can't possibly be experts at everything.