Thirty seconds can be a lifetime to a commercialmaker. The same half-minute can also be the difference between a lifetime continuing or abruptly ending.
In last week’s e.dition (12/12), director Anthony Rose of Flying Fish, Sydney, and Moo Studios, Los Angeles, told SHOOT of his harrowing experience in Mumbai as he and his crew survived terrorist attacks which claimed the lives of 170 people in November. Rose and his colleagues were in the Taj Mahal Hotel when gunfire erupted and a siege of some 60 hours began across the city.
“I’m very proud of our crew and their staying calm under intense pressure,” related Rose. “Being in this business prepares you for those occasions when the ground shifts under your feet quickly.
“We worked as a unit,” he continued, “and relied on each other. But ultimately our survival was probably due more to good luck than it was good management.”
That luck was evident on several fronts. For one, if he decided to stay in the Taj lobby to have a drink and wind down after flying over from Sydney, he would have been killed.
“We’re talking a difference of about thirty seconds or so,” Rose said. “We were late for a meeting in the Sea Lounge, which was a small flight of stairs up from the lobby. Gunfire broke out less than a minute after I left the lobby.”
Rose and his crew spent the next seven hours hunkered down in an out of the way banquet room tucked away in the Sea Lounge.
“We were extremely lucky. If the gunmen had turned and looked left instead of right when they came up the stairs around a corner, they would have seen us.”
Lady luck also smiled when Rose and crew decided to leave their place of refuge after seven hours.
“We evacuated at the right time,” observed the director. “There was a saying in the film Master and Commander which went something along the lines that you have to be decisive to be a captain but not necessarily correct. You make a decision and go with it and that’s what we did when we left the Sea Lounge.”
Rose and his compatriots fashioned a make-shift rope made of torn curtains to facilitate a 30-foot drop to the street below.
“Nobody wanted to be the first to climb down the rope so I wound up doing it. It was scary,” related Rose. “Most of my crew slid down that way. We left all our gear behind.”
The Sea Lounge was subsequently destroyed by fire and grenade blasts.
Rose and his compatriots took cover in the lobby of another hotel and then a crew member’s hotel room during the ongoing siege.
Now Rose, who splits his time between Australia and the U.S. depending on where the work takes him, is back to more mundane matters, assessing what insurance will cover in terms of lost and damaged equipment, including cameras. His intent is to return to Mumbai sometime in March to shoot a television series project as originally planned.
Rose today takes nothing for granted and treasures just being alive. It’s a feeling of gratitude we should all carry with us this season and for that matter year ’round. Happy holidays!
Please note: This is our last e.dition of SHOOT for 2008. We’ll be back with our first e.dition of 2009 on Friday, January 9.
“Se7en” Turns 30, Gets A Special Restoration From David Fincher For Its Re-Release
For David Fincher, seeing “Se7en” in 4K was an experience he can only describe as harrowing. That or a high school reunion.
“There are definitely moments that you go, ‘What was I thinking?’ Or ‘Why did I let this person have that hairdo’?” Fincher said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
He’s OK with the film being a product of its time in most respects. But some things just could not stand in high-definition resolution.
“It was a little decrepit, to be honest,” said Fincher. “We needed to resuscitate it. There are things you can see in 4K HDR that you cannot see on a film print.”
Ever the perfectionist, he and a team got to work on a new restoration of the film for its 30th anniversary re-release. This weekend the restored “Se7en” will play on IMAX screens for the first time in the U.S. and Canada, and on Jan. 7, the 4K UHD home video version will be available as well.
The dark crime thriller written by Andrew Kevin Walker and starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as a pair of detectives looking for a serial killer was somewhat of a career-reviver for Fincher, whose directorial debut “Alien 3” had not gone well. “Se7en” was not a sure thing: It was made for only $34 million (and only got that when Fincher managed to persuade studio execs to give up $3 million more). But it went on to earn more than $327 million, not accounting for inflation, and continues to influence the genre.
Fincher has over the years overseen several restorations of the film (including one for laser disc) but decided this needed to be the last. It’s why he insisted on an 8K scan that they could derive the 4K from. He wanted to ensure that it wouldn’t have to be repeated when screens get more... Read More