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filmscience presents a film by Joe Swanberg
SHORT SYNOPSIS
Hannah, a recent college graduate, spends a brutally hot Chicago summer falling in and out of love. As she struggles to find personal and professional fulfillment through various relationships with friends and co-workers, she risks leaving destruction in her wake.Working collaboratively with his cast, which features several prominent independent filmmakers, Joe Swanberg follows up his previous efforts, KISSING ON THE MOUTH and LOL, with this delicate look at friendship, ambition and the pursuit of happiness.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
I value the trust of my collaborators more and more with each new project. It is a gift,and I treasure it. With HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS, despite initial fears and hesitations, or perhaps because of them, many people whom I love and admire were willing to put their busy lives on hold for days and weeks to gather in Chicago and sleep on the floor with me in a rented apartment and make a movie. We shared ideas, fears, loves, successes and failures. We stayed up late and danced. It was magical. I grew as a person just as much as I did as a filmmaker. I can’t ask for anything more.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
A collection of filmmakers converged in Chicago during July and August of 2006. Over the course of their four-week indie film summer camp, they shared an apartment and combined their talents to create HANNAH  TAKES THE STAIRS, a hopeful narrative about a young woman trying to find her way and define herself. The film follows Hannah, fresh out of college, through the ups and downs of three different relationships. Hannah is lovely and talented but also insecure and inherently discontent. Her story is tender and truthful, and it is delicately told, with no shortage of subtle humor, reflective beauty and awkward moments.Director Joe Swanberg had an initial concept for a film about a female character who bounces between multiple relationships. He was open to follow where the story would lead and sought out interesting people to cast and build a plot around. He enlisted the help of several prominent independent filmmakers and friends he had met along the festival circuit – including Mark Duplass (Mike), Andrew Bujalski (Paul), Ry Russo-Young(Rocco) and Todd Rohal (Brian Duges).While Greta Gerwig had a significant role in Joe’s second feature film, LOL, her character was only seen and heard through a cell phone, and the pair didn’t actually meet in realtime until the film premiered at SXSW 2006. Shortly thereafter, Joe offered the role of Hannah to Greta, who embodies many of the qualities Joe had envisioned for the character, a charming, intelligent “old soul” with a quick and easy sense of humor. Like Hannah, Greta was also making the transition to post-college life. Joe brought Greta and Kent Osborne (the Emmy-nominated writer who plays Matt) to Chicago, where they shot an improvised five-minute short film, THANKS FOR THE ADD, on Joe’s stoop . The short gave them the chance to work together on camera and introduced them to Joe’s shooting methods and directing style. They also began to further develop the storylines and characters for HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS.Once filming began on the feature in mid-July, random scenes were shot from a basics outline and later pieced together. As the shoot progressed, the theme of chronic dissatisfaction emerged, and Joe and Greta wrote a one-page synopsis for the remainder of production. The overall structure of the film was developed during Joe’s nightly editing sessions, and the cast would check out the footage each night before discussing the next day’s scenes.While its methodology is similar to Joe’s previous films, HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS is a departure in some ways as well. It marks the first time Joe wasn’t on camera, and he shot HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS every frame himself (on HD) as a result. Filming only lasted four weeks, while his prior feature productions each took six months. It was also his first film set in summer and the first time his characters were shown in a work environment, although they rarely got any work done. Finally, there are many longer, uninterrupted shots with fewer cuts, a product of the improvisational nature of the shoot and how well the cast played off each other.The cast would regularly hang out together and enjoy meals prepared by Kevin Bewesrdorf, who served as a one-man crew, as well as the film’s composer and the apartment’s gourmet chef. Joe’s fiancée and sometime-collaborator, Kris Williams, bought an old Atari system for the apartment and lots of downtime was spent playing the game Breakout. Having a loose yet tight-knit set was integral to the process, but the last week of filming was somber. It was hard to say goodbye. Kind of like summer camp. New friendships developed in the short period of time and everyone fell for a girl named HANNAH.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Joe Swanberg was born in Detroit in 1981. He moved around a lot growing up, even spending two years on Kwajalein, an island in the Pacific Ocean. He studied film production at  Southern Illinois University, where he developed an interest in emerging video technology and a crippling addiction to the Internet. After graduating in 2003, Joe worked for the Chicago International Film Festival and also created numerous websites and several short films. His previous two feature films, KISSING ON THE MOUTH and LOL,premiered at SXSW, in 2005 and 2006, respectively. HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS had its world premiere at SXSW 2007, where Joe won the inaugural Eagle Pennell Award.
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