As president and founder of production company Little Minx, Rhea Scott has created a collaborative community of filmmakers which often leads to members of the shop’s directorial roster working with and inspiring one another. For example, on occasion director Malik Hassan Sayeed has hearkened back to his cinematography roots and lensed a select branded content assignment for a fellow director. Such was the case when he shot a Chanel No. 5 project directed by Little Minx colleague Luca Guadagnino whose feature exploits include Suspiria, Challengers and Call Me by Your Name. The latter earned director-producer Guadagnino a Best Picture Oscar nomination in 2018.
Scott brought the two together, reasoning that they would mesh and well aware of Guadagnino’s admiration for Sayeed as a cinematographer dating back to his lensing of Spike Lee’s Clockers, He Got Game and The Original Kings of Comedy, as well as second unit shooting duties on Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Guadagnino and Sayeed bonded on the aforementioned Chanel job back in the fall of 2023, leading to a pair of collaborations that Scott hadn’t foreseen. Sayeed hadn’t lensed a narrative feature for some 25 years and had no plans to return to such work–until the opportunity arose to lens director Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, an Amazon MGM Studios psychological thriller starring Julia Roberts, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last week. Roberts plays a college professor of philosophy who finds herself at a personal and professional crossroad. A star student (portrayed by Ayo Edebiri) accuses the professor’s friend and colleague (Andrew Garfield) of serious misconduct. The After the Hunt screenplay by Nora Garrett raises concerns, questions and offers no simple resolutions.
Following After the Hunt, Sayeed went on to shoot another Guadagnino feature, Artificial, an Amazon MGM Studios production about the controversial 2023 firing and rehiring of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Sayeed, now an established director with notable work in commercials and music videos, was drawn back to feature cinematography by the opportunity to collaborate with Guadagnino. Sayeed recalled that the Chanel job “planted the seed,” adding that “what struck me right away was Luca’s precision with atmosphere. He builds worlds that are tactile and psychological. There was trust from the beginning. Rhea’s instinct in bringing us together was right.”
Sayeed had left narrative feature cinematography in the ‘90s to focus on directing. He related, “I made a promise to myself that if I ever returned to features, the story and collaborators would have to check very specific boxes. After the Hunt did that. The script felt smart, timely and resonant. And Luca’s approach–his mastery of film grammar, his willingness to push away from orthodoxy–aligned with where I was in my life and career.”
Regarding the nature of his collaboration with Guadagnino, Sayeed shared, “We started from texture and pressure. We treated the camera as a witness to everything; sometimes close enough to feel the constriction of a room, sometimes patient enough to let silence itself feel accusatory.
“On a practical level, Luca and I set very specific parameters,” continued Sayeed. “We drew from [director Ingmar] Bergman/[cinematographer Sven] Nykvist, and [cinematographer] Gordon Willis’s work with Woody Allen, and we limited ourselves to light that was authentic to the period. That discipline made a visual language that was both restrained and charged, so the audience could feel the weight of the environment pressing in on the characters.”
Scott noted that After the Hunt is a departure from what one might expect Sayeed to shoot, relating that his cinematography back in day–such as director Hype Williams’ Belly–was “highly visual.” By contrast, After the Hunt is more “quiet” visually and more dialogue-driven. Scott went to London to visit Guadagnino and Sayeed as they collaborated on After the Hunt, with sets being built at Shepperton Studios. She found Guadagnino and Sayeed “in total flow with each other.” Similarly, Scott witnessed a “deep brotherhood” between the two when she later saw them in Italy and San Francisco on Artificial.
Working in tandem on After the Hunt made for a smooth transition to Artificial as Guadagnino and Sayeed developed a shorthand. Sayeed elaborated that with After the Hunt, “we built a language where every choice had to connect to emotional stakes. Artificial is a different arena. Obviously we won’t copy the look, but we’ve been keeping the discipline.”
And working with Guadagnino has informed Sayeed “completely” as a director. “Directing can make you think in macro terms; shooting this with Luca retrained my ear for the micro…Again, Luca trusts atmosphere to carry psychology. That sharpens my own directing–to let texture equal emotion rather than decoration.”
Sayeed touched upon the lasting impression made on him by Guadagnino. “What stuck with me was Luca’s process. He doesn’t storyboard or come in with everything mapped out. He reacts to the rehearsal, to what’s happening right there in front of him. That means you have to be ready for anything, and I found that incredibly alive.
“Earlier in my career that kind of uncertainty might have been hard for me, but it feels like a gift now. It keeps the work honest. There’s an energy to responding in real time instead of forcing something planned, and that’s what made the experience so invigorating.”
Scott cited some full-circle dynamics as coming into play, recalling when she met Sayeed 27 years ago. “He was working with Kubrick at the time doing second unit. I had to convince him to direct.”
Fast forward to 2024, continued Scott, and “Luca was the one who convinced Malik to shoot a movie again.”
Furthermore the cinematographer turned director has found that recently returning to work as a feature DP has positively impacted him as a director.
Another full circle path could be in the offing. Originally collaborating on an advertising project which led to two features, Guadagnino and Sayeed might very well be on the road back to branded assignments. “Their relationship is going to grow into advertising,” related Scott. “We had huge projects lined up for them that had to be put on hold for the film shoots. We plan to restart as soon as they wrap Artificial.”
Guadagnino and Sayeed could embark on that ambitious branded fare in the next month or so, according to Scott.
