This is the fifth installment of SHOOT's continuing series on the Academy Awards. This week we connect with a variety of nominees spanning the Best Motion Picture, Directing, Editing and Short Subject Documentary categories.
For Steven Spielberg, the editing of Lincoln came well before shooting began. It started with the editing of Tony Kushner's script which was some 550 pages. (Kushner is nominated for this year's Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.)
"The process was like being in an editing room," recalled Spielberg, noting that Kushner's master work could have been a book, a play or an HBO miniseries. But by carefully paring that script down to focus on just part of President Abraham Lincoln's many landmark accomplishments, the structure for the movie came together–so much so that Spielberg's rough cut of the film was only 20 minutes longer than the release print. By contrast, the director noted that his rough cut for Schindler's List was four-and-a-half hours with the final release running three hours and 15 minutes.
As for the actual editing of Lincoln, Spielberg described his working relationship with editor Michael Kahn, A.C.E., as "an intuitive brotherhood." Kahn has been Spielberg's editor since 1976.
The director cited part of Kahn's approach as being a storytelling key–namely to not constantly cut to someone who's listening to a speaking character but rather to "let the audience be the listener." With Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal of Lincoln so compelling, why cut away from it?
Spielberg related that given the stature of Lincoln as a subject, the performance of a cast headed by Day-Lewis, and the ambition and quality of Kushner's work, "I made a pact with myself" to step behind the cast and script, to "put a silencer on the camera…to direct from behind the scenes and push forward."
Spielberg said that this film was all about Lincoln's story, Day-Lewis' tour de force performance, and Kushner's brilliant script. Spielberg wanted all those elements to speak for themselves, resulting in him being "as restrained as I've ever been as a director."
Adding to the eloquence of those elements and that directorial restraint was the cinematography of cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg's long-time collaborator.
In terms of imagery, President Lincoln was intentionally obscured in select scenes. Spielberg explained that he used this as a means "to preserve the mystery and complexity of Lincoln," making it all the more impactful when Day-Lewis "broke through that enigma." On those occasions, Kaminski would have Lincoln step out into the light. Spielberg said he and Kaminski played with that throughout the film.
Held on Feb. 2 at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles and moderated by director Jeremy Kagan–with a simultaneous live video feed to a gathering at the DGA's NY Theatre–the session featured Spielberg; Ben Affleck who went on that night to win the DGA Award for Argo; Kathryn Bigelow who was nominated for Zero Dark Thirty; Ang Lee, a nominee for Life of Pi; and Tom Hooper, nominated for Les Miserables.
Of these five DGA nominees, only Lee and Spielberg received corresponding Best Director Oscar nominations.
But Affleck, Bigelow and Hooper all saw their respective films garner multiple nominations, including for the Best Picture Academy Award. Life of Pi and Lincoln are also up for the Best Picture Oscar.
Sense of belonging
Asked what lessons he derived from his experience on Argo, Affleck said he "learned to work with a writer who was the originator of the idea. He [Chris Terrio, Oscar-nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and winner of the WGA Award] made the movie so much better."
Argo also gave Affleck "a sense of belonging and an elevated sense of confidence." He noted that he's long aspired to become part of the directing fraternity and Argo has helped him to do that. This has certainly been punctuated by Affleck being nominated for and then winning the DGA Award.
That sense of belonging, though, might not have come to pass if not for a pivotal editing decision. Affleck said that the movie wasn't coming together as he had liked in the edit room–until he suggested to his trusted editor William Goldenberg, A.C.E., that almost all of the scenes of Tony Mendez (the character portrayed by Affleck) with his wife and child be taken out of the film. The removal of this subplot module made all the difference. Affleck said everything had come together after that. While that module was well performed and of high quality, it somehow didn't quite fit naturally into the overall story–it was like, said Affleck, "a transplanted organ that the body was rejecting."
Goldenberg earned two Best Editing Oscar nominations this year–one for Argo, the other for Zero Dark Thirty which he and Dylan Tichenor, ACE, cut. Goldenberg has a track record with Affleck, dating back to when he edited Affleck's feature directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone.
Digital discovery
Zero Dark Thirty was director Bigelow's first digital movie. She and cinematographer Greig Fraser opted to go with the ARRI ALEXA. Going digital was necessitated, she explained, by the low light levels involved in the shooting of the climactic nighttime sequences depicting the Navy SEALs' raid on the Pakistan compound where Osama Bin Laden was killed.
Bigelow observed that ALEXA yields a film grain-like look. "It doesn't have that ultra clarity that digital can have," she said. "Greig [Fraser] and I fell in love with the camera."
With an affinity for deploying multiple cameras on her features, Bigelow estimated that she shot the equivalent of some 1.8 million feet of film for Zero Dark Thirty, which was cut over a 19-week span by Tichenor and Goldenberg.
Suitable for framing
As he did in The King's Speech to great effect, Hooper played with the framing of actors on camera in Les Miserables. For example, when Anne Hathaway's prostitute character is in a coffin box bed, used by sailors during that era, Hooper put her on camera in "the short side of the frame," explaining that there's a "tension" conveyed in such framing, akin to how he had Colin Firth lensed in scenes of The King's Speech, accentuating the fact that King George VI was constrained by his stuttering.
Hooper marveled at his cast's work within the confines of an ambitious musical, citing Hathaway as an example, being able to sing on pitch and cry simultaneously, to transform from hope and vulnerability to a hardening and deadening of her soul, all while singing in a continuous take with a camera focused solely on her.
Embracing doubt
Asked if he ever has doubts, Life of Pi director Lee said that whenever doubts set in, things "get interesting." When he started out, Lee tried to hide any trace of doubt. But once he started to have some "success under my belt, I wouldn't hide it as much."
He quipped that people don't seem to mind doubt "as long as you look like you're thinking."
Lee described doubt as "a usable thing." To have and share doubt can be a healthy proposition, said Lee, citing the value of "doubt as inspiration."
Helping to inspire Lee are his collaborators, including his long-standing editor of choice, Tim Squyres, A.C.E.
Post perspectives
SHOOT connected with editor Squyres who earned his second career Oscar nomination and third ACE Eddie Award nom for Life of Pi, continuing a collaborative relationship with Ang Lee spanning all of his feature films with the exception of Brokeback Mountain.
Squyre's first Oscar and Eddie nominations came for the Lee-directed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The editor's second Eddie nomination was for Gosford Park, directed by Robert Altman.
For Squyres, receiving Academy Award and Eddie nominations is always gratifying, particularly, though, for Life of Pi.
"It's not clear what type of film it is," Squyres observed. "Life of Pi is a hard film to categorize. It probably has the fewest cuts of any of the [Oscar] nominated films so it's not the kind of film that's obvious in terms of the editor's contributions. For editors to recognize those contributions is quite an honor."
As for the challenges Life of Pi posed to him as an editor, Squyres cited several. "Obviously there were huge technical challenges, one being 3D. I cut the film entirely in 3D, serving as the post stereographer. Plus there was an enormous amount of physical effects to wrangle. Particularly cool about this film is that the big visual effect was one of the main characters [Bengal tiger Richard Parker]. As an editor you can help craft the tiger's performance. You can cheat on things, craft the tiger's actions. You get involved in aspects of filmmaking as an editor that you don't have that much say in normally [with a human live-action performance]."
Yet the greatest challenge of Life of Pi didn't reside in the technical realm, related Squyres. "The biggest challenge was basic storytelling. It was a great script but structurally the film was challenging. The first section had a bunch of flashbacks, quick scenes with narration. The next section, the ship sinks. They're adrift on the ocean for an hour, trying to stay alive. But there's not the typical story element pulling you through. You want the audience to get the sense of being adrift at sea. However, you don't want the audience to feel that the story is drifting. That's the balance I had to try to achieve as an editor."
Regarding his bond with director Lee, Squyres noted, "We understand each other's tastes very well. We agree on a lot but not on everything. If we agreed on everything, I wouldn't be of any help to him. You need a little pushing back and forth. We push each other to try things we might not otherwise."
Meanwhile, though they may not be Oscar nominees, assorted postproduction artisans had a hand in Academy Award-nominated films, a prime example being Stephen Nakamura of Company 3 who served as digital intermediate colorist on Zero Dark Thirty.
Nakamura observed that Zero Dark Thirty was "an unusual project for many reasons–all originating with director Kathryn Bigelow's vision of a film that feels absolutely real, never 'lit.' A lot of times there will be visual aspects of a movie that might seem a little artificial–if you think about it–but that are so conventional that an audience just accepts that they're "real" for the world depicted in the movie. For example, a set of a small room might look a little more spacious than it would in real life. An exterior, especially a night exterior, might show more light hitting people and objects in the shot than you'd really see if you were in that location.
"The film's wonderful cinematographer, Greig Fraser, took Kathryn at her word and figured out how to shoot the incredible raid sequence with a minimal amount of light. She would have been happy to walk on a set of a dark room and literally have it be so dark you'd barely be able to make out anything. Obviously, Greig still had to be able to get some kind of an exposure with the digital ARRI ALEXA cameras he used, and you still need some kind of contrast between light and dark to discern shapes and see anything at all on the theater screen. Greig used very minimal amounts of light, carefully placed, and made the most out of the ALEXA's low-light capabilities. The images didn't just look like conventional movie darkness; they looked dark!"
Nakamura noted that "so much of what I do during the color grading phase is about using the digital tools I have in my digital intermediate theater to very subtly fine-tune the cinematographer's images. I use Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve to isolate portions of every shot and add or subtract contrast, make something a tiny bit brighter or darker, sharper or blurrier, or more or less saturated to help draw the viewers eyes' to some part of the frame without the viewer actually noticing the image has been manipulated.
"On Zero Dark Thirty, if there were bright highlights from one of the few lights Greig did use, I needed to take them down even though leaving them in, or even enhancing them, might add some pleasing contrast to the images. A lot of important information–including skin tones–generally exists in the mid-tone range. Those also had to come down. The blacks had to be completely crushed, making it impossible to differentiate shapes and objects in the darkest parts of the frame. And I had to let the color saturation almost disappear entirely."
According to Nakamura, "The filmmakers' vision meant that I couldn't make much use of the elements of a shot that I usually manipulate while grading. I still needed to go through every frame and isolate and slightly enhance certain areas–a helicopter, a group of Navy SEALS–so the audience could always make out what's happening.
"I can't recall ever working with other filmmakers who asked me to make everything as dark as it can possibly be without just having a completely black screen. But I think the final results are very exciting and that the artistic vision really makes the whole raid sequence work on a very visceral level."
Mondays at Racine
Director Cynthia Wade is no stranger to the Academy Awards. Five years ago, her Freeheld won the Oscar for Best Short Subject Documentary.
Now she has her second career nomination in the same category on the strength of Mondays at Racine, which tells the story of two sisters–Rachel and Cynthia–who run a beauty salon on Long Island. Every third Monday of the month, their salon, called Racine, provides free beauty and support services for women undergoing chemotherapy.
The sisters–who lost their mother to breast cancer–are determined to give women who are losing their hair, eyebrows and eyelashes a sense of normalcy and dignity during a traumatic, uncertain time. The loss of hair and its impact on personal image evolves into a poignant, moving look at womanhood, motherhood and marriage.
As for what her most recent Oscar nomination means to her personally and professionally, Wade related, "There's a fear when you win the first time: 'Was it just luck?' Getting nominated the second time–along with two wins at the Sundance Film Festival in between–helps to allay that fear. This [Academy Award] nomination is reassurance that you're on the right path based on the body of work that you're building."
Wade is also appreciative of an important difference between her two Oscar-nominated documentaries.
"All of the women in Mondays at Racine are alive and that has not always been the case with my documentaries. In Freeheld, the dying policewoman never lived to see the finished film, that it went to the Sundance Film Festival or won an Oscar. For the women [in Mondays at Racine]–some still battling cancer, some in remission–the fact that they can share in this film, have parties and watch the Oscars means everything to me. We are bringing the two sisters who run the Racine salon out to Hollywood for the Academy Award ceremony."
Beyond documentary fare, Wade is also diversifying into different filmmaking disciplines. Her documentary chops, for instance, are translating well into the advertising arena.
"Finding the real moments has become intuitive for me. Making documentaries has honed my skills in finding the organic truth of what the story is and how to cast accordingly. While continuing to do my documentary work for HBO and the Sundance Channel, I started to broaden out into directing unbranded content for a number of clients."
For Hershey, she introduced viewers to a K-12 boarding school the company has created through revenue from chocolate sales. The school is home to at-risk children from low-income families. Working with agency Arnold New York, Wade commemorated the 100-year anniversary of the school with a documentary which played on the Sundance and IFC Channels, raising awareness of the school and its positive impact on young lives.
Wade has also directed unbranded films for Bristol Myers and pharmaceuticals company Salix. The former doesn't delve so much into medicine but rather tells the stories of people who have health issues. The Salix project consists of a series of shorts which have come together in a 28-minute film showing how patients and their families deal with and are impacted by a rare liver disease.
Wade is also directing some local commercial work in Berkshire, Mass. She is handled by East Coast indie rep firm Schaffer/Rogers and looking to perhaps connect with an established commercial production house to take on mainstream spots and branded content opportunities. While she is best known for her accomplishments as a documentarian, Wade has advertising in her DNA. She is the great granddaughter of John Orr Young, the "Y" in Y&R.
For The Road To Oscar, Part IV, click here.
For The Road To Oscar, Part III, click here.
For The Road To Oscar, Part II, click here.
For The Road To Oscar, Part I, click here.
And for Oscar season related profiles of directors and DPs, click on David O. Russell, Ang Lee, Juan Antonio Bayona, John Toll, ASC, and Ben Richardson.
