
Oh, Hi!, an indie comedy that takes a surprising turn, got into Sundance as a work in progress — which meant director Sophie Brooks and her team faced a time crunch to finish post production on the film in time for the festival.
But it wasn’t a mad dash — more of a brisk, confident walk. Brooks (The Boy Downstairs), cinematographer Conor Murphy (Mickey and the Bear) and colorist Sam Daley (Succession, Barbarian) took MovieMaker through the process of preparing Oh, Hi! for Park City, from the origins of the film to getting into Sundance to using color to navigate the shift in the narrative.
Brooks and Murphy are bringing a film to the festival for the first time, but Daley, a senior colorist at the beloved post facility Picture Shop, has worked on so many Sundance films that “I stopped counting,” he tells MovieMaker.
His experience is one reason he was confident going into the accelerated post process for Oh, Hi! Daley is used to being hired for films trying to get into Sundance, but it was a nice change to work on one that was already accepted.
“This gave us some excitement on day one, knowing that there be an audience in Park City for the work that we’ve all done together,” he says.
Oh, Hi! Director Sophie Brooks on Its Origins
We started by asking Brooks what everyone asks filmmakers who get into Sundance, one of the most prestigious of all festivals: How did you do it, besides making a great film?
She isn’t sure. Though she’s submitted before, she doesn’t know if Sundance programmers know her work. But they do know the work of her star and producer, The Bear star Molly Gordon, who co-directed, co-wrote, and starred in Theater Camp, which won 2023’s Sundance U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble.
“So she certainly has relationships with people there and I think they love her and adore her,” Brooks says.
Oh, Hi! originated during Covid lockdowns when a film Brooks had been working on was derailed by the pandemic. Her agent urged her to come up with an idea that could be shot during Covid, and she collaborated on it with Gordon, a friend of a decade with whom she shared a pandemic pod in Los Angeles.
“I told her the idea, and she immediately responded to it, and was really excited about it, and super supportive, and we decided to do it together and developed the story kind of over a weekend, which was really fun and creative,” Brooks says. “And we’re such good friends that it felt like we were just playing, but also having this really beautiful collaboration.
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“And then I went and wrote the script in my childhood bedroom in two-and-a-half weeks, in like a fever dream. And I’d never had an experience like that, where it just pulled out of me so quickly, but she and I really bonded over healing from heartbreak, and the movie is really exploring dating and gender dynamics and kind of re-entering the dating world and realizing how scary It is.”
Gordon also has a story by credit on Oh, Hi!, and Brooks wrote the film with her and actor John Reynolds in mind. The film, which also stars Logan Lerman and Geraldine Viswanathan, almost shot in 2021, but ultimately filming completed last year.
The team submitted it to Sundance four weeks into what turned out to be an 11-week edit.
Finding Conor Murphy and Sam Daley

The way the Oh, Hi! team came together is a reminder that good recommendations and friendships matter.
Brooks met Murphy through her friend Matt Shear, an actor and director who had starred in her debut feature, the 2017 film The Boy Downstairs. She loved the look of Shear’s film Fantasy Life, and learned that Murphy had been its director of photography.
“I emailed him on a Friday, we met on a Tuesday, and by Thursday, I think, he was upstate with us, scouting with the production designer and the producers. He just jumped right in,” Brooks says.
Daley had colored Fantasy Life. He and Murphy had first started working together on Little Brother, a film directed by Sheridan O’Donnell that debuted in 2023.
“That was the first movie I did with Sam,” Murphy says. “We’ve done four movies now, and Sam’s really changed the way I think about how to color film, which in turn has changed the way that I shoot a film, because I know what can be done with this set of tools that you take to the film at the end.”
Daley works closely with directors of photography — he’s an associate member of the American Society of Cinematographers — and quickly clicked with Murphy.
“I think Conor and I have that same balance of practicality and artistry,” Daley says. “And I could see that right away.
“We don’t shoot negatives anymore, sadly. But it used to be, when I would work on a film, I could read a negative — I could see how it was exposed and lit, and I could kind of understand what the intent was and could just get there. I had the same kind of feeling with the way Conor exposed his camera files: ‘I know what you’re going for.’ And I knew where I could help, and I knew where I needed to just bring it out and enhance what was already there.”
Murphy adds: “Sam will spend some time with the footage on his own before we color a movie with the director, and a lot of times, when I go into his studio, the first time I’m seeing it is with Sam. A lot of the things that I want are already done — like the faces that I want to brighten, the walls that I want to darken, the vignettes that create shape, lamps being brought down or up, certain colors being subdued or others popped.
“They’re hard things to put your finger on, but just like the general shape of an image and the levels and the densities of of the blacks and the shadows and the densities of the highlights and where detail is lost or retrieved — it’s not an objective science. It’s art, it’s a dance.”
Color and Oh, Hi!
Daley came aboard during the camera tests for Oh, Hi!. Murphy ultimately opted to shoot on ARRI Alexa 35, though one underwater sequence required a Sony A7sIII. The film was shot mostly using Zeiss Super Speed MKIII lenses.
The big plot turn in Oh, Hi! — which of course we won’t spoil here — created an especially fun challenge for Daley, one that required him to think through the film’s color palette from the beginning. He needed to make sure that the film’s changing colors didn’t “shock the audience” after the turn.
“It still feels like the same movie, but we’re seeing it a little differently,” Daley explains. “So the warm tones that we had in the beginning, they’re still there, but maybe they’re a little less saturated, or they’re a little bit more on the yellow side than the red side. So there’s a little bit of a stylistic shift to match the way the story goes.”
Tips for Getting Into Sundance
Given his experience with films getting into Sundance, we asked Daley is he sees any similarities between them, or has developed any sense of what is and isn’t a Sundance film.
He starts with a caveat: “Some projects that I thought were shoe-ins did not get in. Others I was surprised to get in.”
But for the ones that did get in, again: How did they do it?
“I think it’s a combination of things,” he says. “There’s a certain level of quality that needs to there with the script, in the production and the cinematography. There’s also connections. … It’s not nepotistic, but it’s just making sure that the filmmakers that get in have have a little bit of a pedigree. It just guarantees the quality by the time it goes from screener to a DCP projection.”
The festival, of course, doesn’t just have technical concerns.
“There’s also a little bit of zeitgeist — and filmmakers that take chances with new material, and voices from from other groups that have just haven’t been heard in a while there,” Daley adds. “And also, there has to be a statement.”
Oh, Hi! is one of the few films out of thousands that made the cut. What’s the level of excitement for the team?
“So, so exciting,” says Brooks. “I can’t wait to have audiences see it. On the one hand, we have this really expedited post schedule and shooting schedule and everything. But it’s also been in my life for four-and-a -half years, so it feels really exciting for people to finally see it. I just really hope people like it and respond to it.”
Oh, Hi! premieres Sunday, January 26, an noon MST at the Eccles Theatre.