Ridley and Tony Scott’s family of companies has had a banner Emmy season as reflected in nominations for Best Drama Series (CBS’ The Good Wife produced by Scott Free Productions, CBS Productions), Outstanding Miniseries or Movie (Starz’s The Pillars Of The Earth–Tandem Communications and Muse Entertainment in association with Scott Free Films), Outstanding TV Commercial (Subaru’s “Baby Driver” produced by RSA Films and directed by Jake Scott), and Outstanding Nonfiction Special (History channel’s Gettysburg produced by Scott Free Productions in association with Herzog & Company).
This is just a sampling of Scott Free’s and RSA’s Emmy performance. The Good Wife, for example, has earned nine nominations, and Gettysburg tallied seven. SHOOT focuses on the latter because it represents the newest wrinkle for Scott Free, which has maintained a nonfiction TV division under the aegis of executive producer Mary Lisio for just two years.
While the division has turned out several well received projects, Gettysburg in a sense represents “our first big swing, staking claim in the nonfiction space with the division’s first Emmy nominations,” related Lisio. “The nominations are a tremendous honor.”
Leaping into Moat
Lisio, Tony and Ridley Scott served as Scott Free executive producers on Gettysburg, which tapped into sister shop RSA Films for director Adrian Moat, an accomplished commercialmaker on both sides of the Atlantic. “We like to reach into our own pool of directors and Adrian was our first thought,” recalled Lisio, citing his creative, visual and storytelling sensibilities. “We wanted to do a modern look at Gettysburg, a gritty, authentic look at the battle. Adrian jumped all over it and embraced the format.”
Just as, if not more importantly, History took a leap of faith on Moat. Mary Donahue, one of three History executive producers on Gettysburg, explained, “We would have had concerns with anyone who didn’t have a big background in factual TV. But we absolutely fell in love with Adrian, his work and his passion for the project. You could see the narrative skills in Adrian’s short films and commercials. And his compelling visual style was also essential for what we were trying to do.”
As for defining exactly what they were trying to accomplish, Donahue related, “We knew that the 150th anniversary of the commencement of the Civil War was coming up. History had done a fair share of Civil War programming over the years. The norm was for these programs–done by History and others–to reflect the points of view of the generals. Sitting at home one day, I thought that what no one’s ever shown is what it must have been like to be a foot soldier in that war. Gettysburg of course was the most iconic Civil War battle. It represented three days that changed America.”
Spurring on Donahue’s thinking was her recollection of how the Normandy landings were depicted in Saving Private Ryan, “which made me feel what it was like to have been a soldier. It was quite a departure from all the other World War II movies I had seen and experienced. So our thought was simply what if we took the same approach to the battle of Gettysburg–focusing on the perspective of the foot soldier, offering a fresh take on the Civil War and in the process stripping way the levels of romance that had begun to adhere to Civil War storytelling. We wanted to show what the weapons of that time could do to human beings, the intense heat on the battlefield, how brave these soldier were to walk into certain annihilation.”
Donahue then reasoned, “Given what we wanted to achieve, what better company to tell the story than the one run by Ridley and Tony Scott? Scott Free in turn connected us with Adrian who is one of the most creative, collaborative directors I’ve ever encountered. He was a true partner in the production.”
The project’s overriding challenge, observed Scott Free’s Lisio, was simply that “no one can tell the story of Gettysburg in an hour and a half or two hours. You have to pick and choose which stories to tell–our focus being the guys on the ground versus the high-level commanders. Picking through the journals and letters, we figured out individual storylines and how they interconnected while weaving in the facts, the historical statistics and the strategies involved. It’s a battle that has been quite romanticized in the past. We wanted to convey the horror of what it was really like, which includes it being the battle to yield the first cases of PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.]”
Gettysburg debuted on Memorial Day as History launched a four-year initiative to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. The battle of Gettysburg was fought from July 1-3, 1863, by 165,000 troops in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania. Casualties totaled nearly 50,000–the most from any single battle in the Civil War.
Editor’s note: This Emmy nominations story is a preview of SHOOT‘s 8/19 print issue and concurrent electronic edition coverage which will delve into not only Gettysburg but also the creative talent behind nominated programs ranging from Mildred Pierce to Modern Family, Boardwalk Empire to The Kennedys and Too Big To Fail.
