Editor’s note: This is the third installment of SHOOT’s continuing “The Road To Oscar” series. This week we talk to acclaimed cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, BSC, who shot The Help, and take a look at other emerging Academy Award contenders.
Twice Oscar nominated for Best Cinematography (Batman Forever, The Prince of Tides) and thrice an ASC Award nominee (for the same two feature films as well as the HBO miniseries Angels In America), Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, BSC, is once again a key contributor to a movie that is generating considerable Oscar buzz–namely director Tate Taylor’s The Help.
Noting that there were concerns on the part of some movie investors over Taylor’s relative inexperience as a feature helmer, Goldblatt said he was convinced from the outset that the right person was in the director’s chair. “I was never worried,” he shared. “You can’t write that script and not understand how the story goes. Tate’s script was terrific. He knows actors. And Tate is simply a good guy, a great collaborator.”
The alluded to knowledge of actors is grounded in Taylor’s acting experience, which includes being part of the lauded ensemble cast in Winter’s Bone, which was directed by Debra Granik.
“We worked well together [on The Help],” related Goldblatt. “I trusted him with the actors, performance, the script. He trusted my knowledge in how to shoot narrative film. He trusted me in so many aspects. “
Those aspects included, said Goldblatt, “having a budget that was not so much more expensive than an independent film while needing to recreate a full scale period piece [during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s] shooting in Mississippi.”
Sometimes the financial constraints led naturally to the right approach. “Instead of having the fancy cranes used today, I wound up going with an old crane mothballed in New Orleans,” related Goldblatt. “That crane suited the period we were trying to create. It naturally fit into what we were trying to capture in a way that it would have been captured during that period.”
Still, the combination of a relatively tight budget and a script of 150 pages had its challenges. “The film is two hours and twenty minutes long. That’s a lot of film to capture within our budget. The time and money weren’t there, yet we had a wonderful cast and crew. Tate let me bring in most of my people. It was helpful that Tate gave me so much freedom which can also be viewed as so much rope on which to hang myself. We became close, worked a lot in pre-pro. We had extensive script meetings and he’d incorporate ideas from me and I would do the same with many of his ideas.”
The collaboration was so engaging and fruitful that the two plan on working together again. “Tate and I are waiting on the next project,” said Goldblatt who during the interim is available for a stretch to take on commercials. Represented by The Skouras Agency for features, TV and spots, Goldblatt has a long ad track record, among his most recent endeavors being an NFL campaign directed by Tucker Gates via Independent Media.
Goldblatt deployed ARRI’s Alexa digital camera on the NFL job. “I’ve shot a few commercials with the Alexa and like it, though the electronic viewfinder goes against the grain for me. I like to see what I’m doing. Yet all in all, I feel pretty good about working with the Alexa,” said Goldblatt who is contemplating going the digital cinematography route with a feature film for the first time.
“I would seriously consider the Alexa for a feature. I didn’t for The Help [shot on 35mm] because I was gun-shy about walking into any problems, particularly working with a high contrast range–scenes, for example, with the very dark skin of [actress] Viola Davis and the angelic blonde baby. That could be difficult enough on film. I wasn’t experienced enough on Alexa when we started The Help anyway. I might have been able to use Alexa on that film with the experience I have now.”
Goldblatt said he’s gratified over the success of The Help, given its substantive content and the opportunity the story afforded him to engage both the mind and the eye. “Hats off to Tate,” affirmed Goldblatt, “for being able to tell a story that engaged audiences for well over two hours.
Silent treatment In The Artist silence is golden and it could also translate into a number of nominations for the golden statuette judging from critical acclaim and an impressive early showing on the awards show circuit, with a Cannes Festival nom for the Palme d’Or for director/writer Michel Hazanavicius and a Best Actor win at Cannes for Jean Dujardin who portrays George Valentin, a charismatic movie star unhappily confronting the new world of talking pictures.
Meanwhile talkies seemingly signal new found movie stardom for young extra Peppy Miller (played by Berenice Bejo). The Artist relates the interlinked destinies of Valentin and Miller, with the former falling for the rising starlet.
Set during the end of Hollywood’s silent era, The Artist is an example of the form it celebrates, a black-and-white silent film that relies on images, actors and music (scored by Ludovic Bource) to tell its story.
The Artist is being distributed by The Weinstein Company. It debuted theatrically in the U.S. on Nov. 25, just days before it tied with Take Shelter (directed by Jeff Nichols) for the most nominations–five, including for Best Feature, Best Director and Best Screenplay at the 2012 Film Independent Spirit Awards.
The Artist was also named the year’s Best Film by the N.Y. Film Critics Circle, which additionally bestowed Best Director upon Hazanavicius.
Hugo The National Board of Review (NBR) selected Martin Scorsese’s 3-D film Hugo as the year’s Best Film, also naming Scorsese as Best Director. Hugo tells the whimsical tale of an orphan who lives in a 1930s’ Paris train station. Adapted by screenwriter John Logan (whose credits include Scorsese’s Aviator) from Brian Selznick’s children’s book, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” Hugo centers on a lonely lad’s search for a new family and happiness.
Like The Artist, the film hearkens back to an earlier movie era, Hugo’s roots being in the wondrous work of French filmmaker Georges Méliès whose groundbreaking use of dissolves, time-lapse photography and visual effects helped define the magic of cinema. Now Scorsese has brought his artistry to 3-D, looking to break new storytelling ground with that technology.
“Hugo is such a personal film by Martin Scorsese,” said Annie Schulhof, NBR president. “It is a tribute to the early years of cinema that uses today’s cutting edge technology to bring the audience into a completely unique and magical world. It is visually stunning and emotionally engaging.”
NBR has a bit of a pedigree in picking films that have gone on to win the Best Picture Academy Award, notable examples including Slumdog Millionaire and No Country For Old Men.
Pixomondo–a VFX company with a global network of studios in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, L.A., London, Shanghai, Beijing and most recently Toronto–completed more than 800 shots as the primary VFX vendor on Hugo, working closely with Scorsese and VFX supervisor/2nd unit director Rob Legato.
Oscar ensemble Though not premiering until next week (12/21), The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is already billed as an Oscar contender. For one, it’s the latest from David Fincher and is being described as a dark, disturbing, controversial adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster crime novel. The film is easily the season’s most anticipated thriller.
But the Oscar buzz goes beyond high expectations and the Oscar pedigree of Fincher, whose The Social Network earned eight Academy Award nominations for 2010, including for Best Picture and Best Director. There’s also an Oscar track record for other key contributors to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, including several artisans with whom Fincher has collaborated with on commercials. (The director’s spotmaking roost is Anonymous Content).
For example, editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall (of Rock Paper Scissors) won the 2010 Best Editing Oscar for The Social Network; they also edited The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. And Jeff Cronenweth, ASC, shot both movies, earning a Best Cinematography Oscar nomination for The Social Network. Baxter, Wall and Cronenweth have all teamed with Fincher on spots.
Cronenweth is repped as a DP by Dattner Dispoto and Associates, and is half of a commercial directing team known as The Cronenweths (with brother Tim) at Los Angeles production house Untitled.
Others with an Oscar history are Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross whose work on The Social Network won the Academy Award for Best Original Music Score. They also scored The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Xmas release Slated for release on Christmas day is Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 novel about a lad (played by Thomas Horn) confronted with tragedy and a mystery. The former is the death of his father (Tom Hanks) in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The mystery is trying to figure out the significance of a key that the late dad left for his son.
Also generating some Oscar rumbling, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was helmed by Stephen Daldry, the only director to receive Academy Award nominations for his first three films–Billy Elliot in 2001, The Hours in ’03, and The Reader in ’09.
Daldry first made his mark in the theater, having directed 100-plus plays, including the Tony Award-winning revival of “An Inspector Calls.” Daldry later directed a stage musical adaptation of Billy Elliot and in ’09 his work on “Billy Elliot the Musical” earned him a Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical. Daldry is handled for spots by Saville Productions.
The Descendants Also gaining Oscar traction is the performance of George Clooney in Alexander Payne’s The Descendants as a father of two whose life is rocked by his wife’s coma and the discovery that she had been having an affair.
Both Clooney and Payne each have an Oscar win and multiple nominations in their careers. Clooney won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in ’06 for Syrianna and received Best Actor nominations for Up In The Air last year and Michael Clayton in ’07. He was also nominated for Best Achievement in Directing and Best Writing of an Original Screenplay (shared with Grant Heslov) for Good Night, And Good Luck in ’06.
Meanwhile for Sideways in ’05, Payne was nominated for Best Director and won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (shared with Jim Taylor). Five years earlier for Election, Payne garnered a nomination for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published (also shared with Taylor).
Last month The Descendants garnered four nominations for the 2012 Film Independent Spirit Awards, including for Best Feature, Director and Screenplay.
J Edgar There’s also been much Oscar talk concerning Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in the Clint Eastwood-directed J. Edgar. Providing an emotionally reserved yet a quite absorbing look at Hoover, the movie has key contributors with an Academy Award track record.
DiCaprio has been nominated three times for Best Actor–the last coming for Blood Diamond and prior to that for The Aviator and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
Eastwood has won the Best Director Oscar twice, for Million Dollar Baby and Unforgiven. He’s also been nominated for his direction of Letters From Iwo Jima and Mystic River.
And the screenplay for J. Edgar was penned by Dustin Lance Black who won the Original Screenplay Academy Award a couple of years ago for Milk.
Dark reunion Released last week was Young Adult, a dark comedy which reunites Juno director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody. Charlize Theron (honored with a tribute at last month’s Gotham Film Awards) stars as a mean-spirited writer returning to her small hometown to win back her high school sweetheart who is married and has just become a father.
Reitman has received a pair of Best Director Oscar nominations, one last year for Up in the Air and in ’08 for Juno. The latter earned Cody the Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay. Theron won the Best Actress Oscar for Monster in ’04.
Reitman is handled for commercials by Bob Industries.
Gotham toppers The award season kicked off last month with a tie for Best Feature between director Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life and director Mike Mills’ Beginners at the Gotham Independent Film Awards.
Starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Last month, The Tree of Life earned Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, the Best Cinematography honor from the New York Film Critics Circle. Meanwhile Beginners, a flashback comedy starring Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer, went on to garner four nominations at the 2012 Film Independent Spirit Awards, including for Best Feature, Director and Screenplay.
Mills had been active in commercials up until several years ago. He is a cofounder of multidisciplinary production company The Directors Bureau.
Sequels Among the sequels up for Academy Award consideration are Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, directed by David Yates, and Happy Feet Two directed by George Miller.
The latter has much to live up to in that the original Happy Feet–also directed by Miller–won in ’07 the Best Animated Feature Film Oscar.
Similarly, the latest Harry Potter film had its Deathly Hallows, Part 1 counterpart–also helmed by Yates–earn a pair of Academy Award nominations earlier this year, for Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects.
