Born with a disability so rare that no reliable statistics for it exist, filmmaker Ella Glendining wonders if there is anyone who can share the experience of living in a body like hers. This simple question leads to a journey not only to others who live like her, but to the realization that meeting them changes how she sees herself in the world. And it reveals many surprises along the way.

Filmmaker Ella Glendining

With intimate personal diaries, conversations with similarly bodied people and doctors treating Glendining’s condition, and a searching and unique perspective, Is There Anybody Out There? invites the viewer to consider questions and assumptions they may have never encountered before. Are people who are born this way supposed to be “fixed” by medicine? Is it ableist to see disabled people as living an undesired existence? With warmth and an infectious joy for her body and life as it is, Glendining challenges how viewers will see others like and unlike themselves.

The film was shot by DP Annemarie Lean-Vercoe, whose credits include Breeders, Murder in Provence and All Creatures Great and Small. We reached out to her for more…

How early did you get involved?
I met Ella four years ago. I heard there was a director who lived locally to me looking for a DP, and when I met her, I knew I wanted to be part of her journey.

How did you work with the Ella? What direction were you given?
We had a very organic way of working together. On our first shoot day, we filmed at her house and then went out for her first antenatal meeting with doctors. Filming started off in a very observational style and continued that way. I think Ella was happy with this observational doc style, and it also made the viewer feel that they were very much on her personal journey with her.

DP Annemarie Lean-Vercoe

What about the color and working with the colorist? What are some notes that you exchanged?
We worked with a post house called Serious Facilities in Glasgow, and Ben Mullen was the colorist. He understood straight away that the film needed to be graded in a naturalistic way, with subtle manipulations to mids and highlights — such as adding a warmer or cooler tone to help enhance the narrative without the viewer noticing.

What did you end up shooting on and why?  
I switched between three different cameras for the duration of the shoot — the Canon C300, the Canon C500 and the Panasonic Lumix GH5. The film is an observational doc, with me mostly shooting and recording sound. I had to be lightweight, compact and quickly versatile, so I shot with two Sigma zoom lenses. The Sigma Art zooms are fast at F1.8. I mostly used the 18-35mm lens and occasionally used the 50-100mm lens.

Are there some scenes that stick out as challenging?
We had a large scene where we meet several new characters in the film for the first time, and I had a second camera person and sound person for that one — so from a technical point of view, our shooting unit expanded drastically for just one day. It had been such an intimate film for so long up to that point, so it was a change of gears for me.

Looking back on the film, would you have done anything different?
Not really. The film needed to unfold the way it did, and I am really pleased with how it turned out.

Any tips for young cinematographers?
Shoot as much as possible, and don’t be afraid to experiment. Find your voice. You never stop learning.