Tom Hooper won an Academy Award and the DGA Award in 2011 for directing The King’s Speech which was nominated for 12 Oscars, also winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Colin Firth) and Best Original Screenplay (David Seidler). The accolades continued for Hooper’s next movie, Les Misérables. The 2012 film earned eight Academy Award nominations, winning for Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway), Best Sound, and Best Make-up and Hair Styling. Hooper also garnered a DGA nomination on the strength of that film.
Hooper’s latest film, The Danish Girl (Focus Features), went wide in the U.S. last month, and the director again finds his work prominent in the Oscar conversation. With a screenplay by Lucinda Coxon based on the book by David Ebershoff, The Danish Girl tells the remarkable, real-life love story of Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener, portrayed in the film respectively by Eddie Redmayne (a Best Actor Oscar winner for The Theory of Everything) and Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina).
The story takes us to Copenhagen in 1926. Einar Wegener is married to Gerda Wegener. Both are painters—Einar the more revered while Gerda specializes in portraits of prominent citizens. They have a strong marriage, which is about to be tested in a profound way, ultimately deepening their love.
Asked by Gerda to fill in for a model by putting on a dress, Einar has a transformative experience, soon realizing that his inner Lili is his true self. Gerda unexpectedly finds that she has a new muse. But the couple feel society’s disapproval and moves to Paris. While their marriage is strained at times, their love remains steadfast. Gerda is supportive and selfless in the quest for Lili to find her true self as a transgender woman.
For Hooper, among the many creative challenges was “the balancing of pain and joy, anxiety and hope. We could not be too centered on the pain of the transition. We didn’t want the audience to sort of feel sorry for someone being a transgender person. We wanted them to understand the happiness that was possible for her. At the same time if we made the film free of pain, that wouldn’t have been true to the dark aspects of the journey we know from Lili’s diaries.”
This delicate balance was easier to attain thanks to the acting prowess of Redmayne. “When Eddie holds the dress against herself, puts the stockings on that first time,” observed Hooper, “you can see her on one hand connecting with her true identity. We get a glimpse of happiness and contentment she couldn’t have previously imagined. Yet at the same time the implications of this are so scary and anxiety inducing—we see Eddie’s character feeling all of that. Eddie brilliantly balanced all this.”
Hooper also discussed several in his ensemble of long-time collaborators, including cinematographer Danny Cohen, BSC, editor Melanie Ann Oliver, ACE, and production designer Eve Stewart.
The Danish Girl is the fifth project Cohen has shot for Hooper, starting with HBO’s Longford, then the HBO miniseries John Adams, The King’s Speech, and Les Misérables. Cohen was an Oscar and BAFTA Award nominee for The King’s Speech, and earned BAFTA, ASC and BSC Award nominations for Les Misérables. He shared an Emmy Award nomination as one of the DPs on John Adams, and received his first BAFTA nod for the telefilm Longford. Among Cohen’s other credits is the recently released Room directed by Lenny Abrahamson. (Cohen will discuss Room in an upcoming installment of this “Road To Oscar” series.)
Hooper said of Cohen, “This [The Danish Girl] is completely unlike anything he’s done before. Danny captured the extraordinary soft Scandinavian, northern European light, the light of long days and long dusks to bring the gentleness of Lily to life. He was instrumental in bringing her to life in this film. He in many ways went on a visual quest similar to Gerda’s quest to see Lily. Gerda was fascinated as she uncovered the femininity of Einar and painted portraits that revealed the true Lily. Danny too explored Eddie Redmayne through the camera and lighting to reveal Eddie’s femininity on screen to the audience. Danny helped Lily to emerge—and the audience to realize Lily’s emergence. Gerda was an artist. Her love and sensibilities as an artist gave her the ability to see things that were buried deep down in her husband. Danny’s work as an artist reflected Gerda’s journey as she fully saw Lily.”
Editor Oliver previously collaborated with Hooper on: Les Misérables for which she was an American Cinema Editors (Eddie) Award nominee; Longford for which she won a BAFTA Award; the Emmy and Golden Globe Award winning historical miniseries Elizabeth I, for which she was an Emmy nominee; the feature The Damned United; and the John Adams miniseries for which Oliver was both an Emmy and Eddie Award nominee.
“Melanie is the most extraordinary editor. She is very intuitive and instinctive, unbelievably thorough,” assessed Hooper. “When you sit down with here, she knows every frame, even when the camera is running before you say, ‘Action.’ Some of her edits require no changes whatsoever. The peep show sequence [in The Danish Girl] was Melanie’s assembly cut. She could be a director in her own right—she is that talented. When I’m in the cutting room with her, I feel like I’m with another director who is also a great editor. I’ve witnessed her do some extraordinary things. She cut all nine hours of John Adams singlehandedly and brilliantly.”
And without giving away storyline, there’s a pivotal scene in The Danish Girl, for which Hooper did a pickup shot towards the end of the production “based on Melanie’s suggestion. She was right about it needing a different feel. That’s how integral she is to me.”
Production designer Stewart has also garnered assorted accolades for her work with Hooper, including Oscar nominations for The King’s Speech and Les Misérables. Hooper said he marvels at Stewart’s ingenuity and her ability to bring a big feel to projects within the confines of challenged budgets. He described her contributions as essential to creating characters and advancing the story. (For more on Stewart and makeup and hair designer Jan Sewell, see the 11/25 installment of our “Road To Oscar” series.)
Asked if he felt a parallel relative to the protagonists in The King’s Speech and The Danish Girl, Hooper said, “Very much so. The Danish Girl shares with The King’s Speech that theme of the blocks that lie between us and the best version of ourselves—and how we overcome those blocks. But in the case of The King’s Speech, the obstacle was stammering. For The Danish Girl, there was no medical condition identified, no road map, the word ‘transgender’ didn’t exist back during that time. Lili was a pioneer. She was one of the world’s first people to undergo gender confirmation surgery, and we get to see the powerful love story of two people who go through this journey together. It movingly portrays a marriage going through a profound transformation.”
Spotlight
Several years ago when he was in the editing stages of his film Win Win, which he directed and co-wrote, Tom McCarthy was approached by producers with the rights to the stories of The Boston Globe reporters whose Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation revealed cases of childhood molestation by some 70 local priests and the Catholic Church’s systematic cover-up of the abuse. “I was immediately drawn to the thumbnail version of the story,” recalled McCarthy. “An outsider comes to the Globe and picks up on a small story in the paper mentioning the Church’s possible complicity in certain crimes. He assigns a team of reporters to dig into the story. This circumstance of an outsider—who comes into the country’s most Irish Catholic city—sparking an investigation struck me as a great storytelling opportunity. The more I dug into the material, the more I saw this incredibly rich story of deep social relevance. I brought in writer Josh Singer to work with me on the screenplay and we dove in.”
Among the prime challenges for McCarthy was the rigor of the investigation he and Singer had to conduct for the movie, which was ultimately titled Spotlight (Open Road Films). “There was no source material. The reporters did not write a book about the investigation. We had to spend time thoroughly researching and investigating their investigation. There was a lot of information to deal with. We read everything we could and then had to figure out how to parse it out throughout the screenplay. Early on we felt the movie had to feel as real and authentic as possible, committing to showing the smaller details of their investigation as often as possible. If we were too slick with it, that would undermine the essence and spirit of their investigation, the hard work these people put in. And that in turn would have undermined the emotional payoff of the film. We had to have a real commitment to craft—a commitment to the process and craft of journalism.”
Spotlight takes us through that process of investigative journalism—the good steps and the missteps—which for this story began in mid-2001 and extended through early 2002. The movie’s title refers to the four person Spotlight section investigative team at the Globe—editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (portrayed by Michael Keaton), reporters Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), and researcher Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James).
McCarthy has found response to Spotlight personally and professionally gratifying. Beyond receiving critical acclaim, Spotlight has elicited positive feedback from distinctly different circles. “Journalists across the country feel we’ve captured their world—and the importance of journalism to society at large. We tell this story through the eyes of the journalists investigating it. I think in ways it makes the story more accessible to the audience. It gives them a lens through which to see these times.
“We’re also hearing from survivors and families of the victims who feel they were well represented by the film. They are the heart of this film,” affirmed McCarthy. “And the Catholic community has by and large embraced the movie. People are connecting to the movie for different reasons. We’re connecting with different people on different levels and what’s most exciting is that we’re unifying them through this story and the issues involved.”
Among the many collaborators who helped McCarthy realize his vision for Spotlight were cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, ASC, and editor Tom McArdle. The latter has cut all five of the movies directed by McCarthy, including Win Win, The Station Agent, The Visitor and The Cobbler. By contrast, Spotlight marks the first time McCarthy has collaborated with Takayanagi. McCarthy said that McArdle helps open up opportunities for him to explore new working relationships, like the connection the director made with Takayanagi.
“To have an editor who knows my work inside and out allows me to collaborate with new people for the first time. Tom has a great sense of clarity and space, is very rigorous and relentless in trying to get the movie as tightly constructed as possible—especially for a film like this which tries to maintain tension throughout. He has a tremendous ability to approach material very objectively, to get rid of the bits and pieces not necessary to tell the story. I try to allow space for the characters in a story. Feeling that space and not rushing the story are important elements of my work. I shoot that way and Tom has a nice way of tightening what I shoot, yielding a film that has space and propulsion for the story, bringing it to life.”
Exploring different DPs for Spotlight, McCarthy said he was most impressed by how Takayanagi “connected to the material. He didn’t come into the project with preconceived notions. Before he makes choices, he wants to make sure he’s on the same page with the director. He doesn’t get ahead of himself. Together you discover. We dug into the screenplay and material, and organically together started to come up with how we wanted to approach the story visually. It was a fun process. In six or seven weeks of prep, we found our approach. He’s very fast, smart, quick with lighting and composition. Masa has a real organic sense of storytelling, a real command of shooting. There were moments of inspiration where we let the other take the lead. We had a wonderful, very easy working relationship—particularly for a first-time collaboration.”
SHOOT connected with McCarthy through Park Pictures, the production company which handles him for commercials and branded content. Observing that feelings are often shaped by your first experience, McCarthy shared that he had a most favorable one at Park directing a Duracell project for ad agency Anomaly. “I loved the experience with Park and the people at Anomaly. They were very collaborative, open-minded. There was a good energy all the way around making for an interesting, refreshing creative process. I’m drawn to storytelling in all forms—features, a short, a :30 or a :60.”
The Big Short
It’s said that comedy is tragedy and both are skillfully blended by director Adam McKay to tell a true story that is humorous yet infuriating in The Big Short (Paramount Pictures) which is based on the book “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” authored by Michael Lewis (“Money Ball,” “The Blind Side”). McKay also wrote the screenplay with Charles Randolph. The cast includes Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt.
Like the book, the movie introduces us to a small group of Wall Street outsiders who find themselves ahead of the investment curve when they bet against the booming, seemingly “can’t lose” housing market well prior to when the real estate bubble burst in the mid-2000s, triggering the global economic meltdown. Their contrarian thinking is rooted in the realization that assorted delinquent home loans headed ultimately for default are being bundled into highly rated mortgage bonds. Big banks, the financial media and government regulators choose to ignore this ticking time bomb which has mainstream Wall Street making money hand over fist. But the looming inevitable fallout represents a golden opportunity as this small group of maverick outside investors concoct a financial instrument called the credit default swap in order to “short” the housing business.
Some five years ago McKay read Lewis’ book and became fascinated with the inside story of the 2008 market crash. It’s a story that McKay aspired to tell in a movie yet on the surface he didn’t seem likely to make the shortlist to direct The Big Short. After all, McKay is best known for his comedy chops, most notably his ongoing collaborations with Will Ferrell. McKay was head writer on Saturday Night Live where he met longtime producing and writing partner Ferrell. The two went on to connect with Chris Henchy to launch the comedy website Funny or Die. Director/writer McKay and writer/actor Ferrell have also teamed on such feature films as Step Brothers, Talladega Nights, The Other Guys, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.
Yet McKay’s brand of humor, even at its silliest, often has political elements dating back to SNL and his work as a founder of the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe. He’s been a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post and has written for TV projects such as Michael Moore’s The Awful Truth. Still he acknowledged that there had to a bit of a leap of faith for him to get The Big Short gig, He credited the team at Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, particularly Jeremy Kleiner and Dede Gardner who oversee the company’s development and production slate, with taking that mini-leap.
McKay shows his acumen for drama and character-based storytelling while injecting some of his signature humor into the story, on select occasions breaking through the fourth wall to reach the audience with inventive cameos that tap into celebs to explain financial matters which banks would prefer to keep complicated. For instance, McKay deploys chef/TV host Anthony Bourdain comparing leftover seafood to toxic financial assets. McKay recruited Bourdain for the scene after reading his memoir “Kitchen Confidential.” “He [Bourdain] tells readers that they should not order seafood stew because it’s where cooks put all the crap they couldn’t sell,” related McKay. “I thought ‘Oh my God that’s a perfect metaphor for a collateralized debt obligation, where the banks bundle a bunch of bad mortgages and sell it as a triple-A rated financial product.”
McKay said he was nervous about breaking the fourth wall and waited to see the audience reaction at the first screening of The Big Short that he attended. “That was one of the challenges I was a little apprehensive about. But I’ve seen a lot of movies I’ve enjoyed over the years reach out to the audience with explanations and observations. I felt this could work for us.”
Besides getting the chance to take on a story he very much wanted to tell, The Big Short also fulfilled another ambition for McKay—the opportunity to work with cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, BSC, whose roots are in documentary filmmaking before transitioning brilliantly to narrative features, including his Oscar-nominated and BAFTA Award-winning lensing of The Hurt Locker. “I’m a huge fan of his,” affirmed McKay about Ackroyd. “United 93 is a modern masterpiece—thanks to Barry and [director] Paul Greengrass. I’ve tracked Barry’s work over the years. I didn’t want the Wall Street world in The Big Short to be cold and monolithic—we’ve seen that before in great films about Wall Street. I wanted to go in another direction—like the contrarian investors. I wanted to show a Wall Street that was much more rumpled, much more raggedy yet artful to reflect these outsiders as human beings. Barry Ackroyd did this brilliantly, helping to capture and reflect these characters.”
A happy discovery for McKay was editor Hank Corwin, ACE (known to the commercialmaking community for work via his edit house Lost Planet). Corwin’s long-form editing credits over the years span such features as Snow Falling On Cedars, Natural Born Killers, Nixon and The Tree of Life. “Plan B recommended Hank and in the first five minutes of our first conversation, I knew he was the guy,” recalled McKay. “Hank is a fountain of imagination, ideas, talents, skills. He’s so collaborative and adventurous.”
Concussion
Among the biggest takeaways for director/writer Peter Landesman from his feature Concussion (Sony Pictures) was that it affirmed the responsibility of a filmmaker towards an actor, in this case Will Smith. “When an actor really digs deep into a role, lays out for you, really finds something that neither of you anticipate, a director has to honor and protect that,” said Landesman. “His performance was one of the very best I’ve seen in a long time. It was a transformative performance.”
Smith portrays Dr. Bennet Omalu, a Nigerian-born forensic pathologist working in the coroner’s office in Pittsburgh where in 2002 he conducts an autopsy on Mike Webster who had committed suicide. Though he did not initially know who Webster was—much less anything about football—Dr. Omalu learned that his “patient” was once a revered member of the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. While the “patient” description seems strange, it actually fits in that Dr. Omalu talks to corpses as if they are live people, developing a rapport with them as he tries to learn their stories—to find out what their bodies tell him.
In the case of Webster, Dr. Omalu found that repeated concussions during the Hall of Fame offensive lineman’s career took their toll on his brain, resulting in a range of debilitating cognitive and emotional symptoms, which ultimately led him to take his own life.
Dr. Omalu goes on to identify and give this degenerative disease in football players a name: CTE or chronic traumatic encephalopahty. Omalu uncovers other cases of former NFL players whose brains were irreparably damaged by repeated head trauma. Naively Omalu at first thinks his scientific discovery will be embraced and lauded but instead he is discredited by the NFL, with negative repercussions on his personal and professional life. But subsequent suicides of former NFL players—most notably Dave Duerson and later Junior Seau—made it difficult for even the NFL to deny Omalu’s findings.
Landesman’s experience as a journalist prior to becoming a filmmaker informed his approach to Concussion. He was an investigative reporter for The New York Times Magazine for a dozen years. Landesman covered the conflicts in Rwanda, Kosovo and the post 9/11 worlds of Afghanistan and Pakistan. As a reporter, he delved into trafficking networks involved in sex slaves, weapons, illegal drugs, stolen and forged art and antiquities. “I was often involved in investigations where the shape of the story wasn’t obvious. You had to dig to pull the story out and define it. I learned that politics and ideology rarely inform why anyone does anything. Instead the driving forces are quite human—greed, appetite, desire, shame, and after the fact political labels are sort of retroactively placed on this behavior.”
So in the case of Concussion, while there was much information for Landesman to gather and sift through, ultimately the movie tells a story about human beings—Omalu, his wife and the colleagues who supported him. “At the end of the day, you’re focused on the human story, with Dr. Omalu being the focus,” said Landesman. “There are many interesting characters and their perspectives on the story are worthwhile. That was one of the biggest challenges I faced. As a writer I was challenged by the number of compelling threads to the story and I had to somehow weave those threads into a single, compelling rope. As a director, this meant having to make some tough choices. We had shot stuff with some strong performances but ultimately I couldn’t use these scenes because they took away from or didn’t reflect Bennet’s journey. The journey Will [Smith] took us on had to take priority.”
Helping to capture that journey on film were various collaborators, including cinematographer Salvatore Totino, ASC, AIC, and editor William Goldenberg, ACE. This marked the first time Landesman worked with Totino. Concussion also marked a return to football for Totino who after starting his career in commercials and music videos landed his first theatrical feature as a DP—director Oliver Stone’s football drama Any Given Sunday. Totino has gone on to enjoy a longstanding relationship with director Ron Howard spanning such films as Frost/Nixon, Cinderella Man, Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and the upcoming Inferno, which was being worked on at press time. While Concussion is slated for a Christmas Day release, another film shot by Totino—director Baltasar Kormakur’s Everest—recently bowed and is gaining Oscar buzz, particularly for its cinematography.
Landesman said he was drawn to Totino for Concussion based on his prior work which the director described as being “muscular, lively and beautiful. Sal has a beautiful eye. His camera movement is subtle yet strong. And I also like him very much as a human being.”
As for Goldenberg, Landesman worked with him on prior occasions, an example being Parkland. Goldenberg served as an editorial consultant on Parkland, which was Landesman’s feature directorial debut. Goldenberg is a five-time Academy Award nominee, winning the Best Achievement in Film Editing Oscar in 2013 for Argo (he was also nominated that same year for Zero Dark Thirty). Goldenberg’s other Oscar noms came for The Insider in 2000 (shared with Paul Rubell and David Rosenbloom), Seabiscuit in 2004, and The Imitation Game earlier this year.
Landesman described Goldenberg as “the most interesting and efficient editor in the movie business. He has worked with Michael Mann for many years [on such films as Heat, Ali, and Miami Vice]. Michael is a filmmaker I respect. I admire the look of his movies. Billy’s cutting pattern is deeply psychological. His cuts reflect and almost mimic what characters are feeling and going through. He brought that to Concussion.”
As for what’s next for writer/director Landesman, the answer is Felt which will star Liam Neeson as Mark Felt who under the name “Deep Throat” helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncover the Watergate scandal in 1975. Landesman is scheduled to begin production on Felt in March.
Sicario
Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, finds “The Road To Oscar” to be a most familiar path, having been a Best Cinematography nominee 12 times, the first coming in 1995 for The Shawshank Redemption and the most recent this year for Unbroken. In between came Oscar noms for: Fargo; Kundun: O Brother, Where Art Thou?; The Man Who Wasn’t There; No Country For Old Men; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; The Reader (shared with Chris Menges); True Grit; Skyfall; and Prisoners.
Though he is yet to win the Oscar, Deakins scored a related prize when he was called upon several years back to introduce director Denis Villeneuve to a gathering at an Academy Award-related evening function. “That’s how I met Denis,” recalled Deakins. “A year later, I heard he would be directing a film, Prisoners, in America. I loved his work, the films he made in Canada. Incendies was a fabulous film. I put my hat in the ring for Prisoners and was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to shoot that film for Denis.”
For Prisoners, Deakins wound up earning nominations for both the ASC Award and an Oscar in 2014. (Deakins has 13 career ASC Award nominations, including four wins—The Shawshank Redemption in 1995, The Man Who Wasn’t There in 2002, True Grit in 2011, and Skyfall in 2013.)
Now Deakins is once again in the awards season conversation, this time for Sicario (Lionsgate), his return engagement with director Villeneuve. For Deakins, the perspective of the story was key. “Denis and I talked about that a lot and thought it had to be centered for the most part primarily around Kate [portrayed by Emily Blunt]. We didn’t want to just shoot conventional action. We wanted a viewpoint to it. We put the audience in Kate’s position. Then it shifts to Alejandro’s (Benicio Del Toro) perspective as we start to understand him more as a character. And finally we arrive at the perspectives of both Kate and Alejandro. It’s kind of a split perspective at the end. Denis steered away from coverage of action just to make it exciting. He went after a personal kind of perspective on the action—the perspective of leading characters.”
For Sicario, Deakins went with the ARRI Alexa XT. “It’s the best digital camera, with strong color fidelity. It feels much more naturalistic than any other digital camera,” assessed Deakins. “Also the XT Studio has an optical viewfiinder which relies on my vision—I prefer it over the electronic viewfinder. The Alexa with ARRI/Zeiss master primes supported the subjective points of view Denis and I wanted for Sicario.”
Deakins’ collaborative relationship with Villeneuve will extend beyond Prisoners and Sicario. The DP is slated to lens for Villeneuve what’s referred to as The Untitled Blade Runner Project. Inherently that movie poses a daunting challenge given the seminal visual pedigree of the original Bladerunner directed by Ridley Scott and shot by the legendary Jordan Cronenweth, ASC. Cronenweth, who passed away in 1996, had won the BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography on the strength of Blade Runner, which also earned him a British Society of Cinematographers Award nomination.
Bridge of Spies
Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski’s first feature with director Steven Spielberg was Schindler’s List in 1993. They have gone on to work on more than a dozen films together. Kaminski has been nominated for an Oscar six times, winning twice for Spielberg films: Schindler’s List in 1994; and Saving Private Ryan in 1999. Kaminski also earned Oscar nominee status for Amistad in 1998, War Horse in 2012 and Lincoln in 2013, all Spielberg-helmed movies. Kaminski’s remaining Oscar nom was for director Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and The Butterfly in 2008.
The latest pairing of Spielberg and Kaminski has yielded the recently released Bridge of Spies (Walt Disney Studios), a suspenseful drama that is based on a true story, taking us to the height of the Cold War when an American lawyer (James Donovan portrayed by Tom Hanks) is recruited to defend an arrested Soviet Spy (Rudolf Abel played by Mark Rylance) in court, and then help the CIA bring about an exchange of the spy for the Soviet captured American U2 pilot, Francis Gary Powers.
Kaminski’s approach shed light, literally, on the relationship between Donovan and Abel. A single light source peered through frosted covered windows, underscoring the coldness not only of the Cold War but also the first meeting of Donovan and Abel. Over time as a connection evolved between the two characters, the cool light slowly gave way to warmer possibilities. “Later you see the friendship between Abel and Donovan build until they eventually have to say goodbye to each other. At that point, there’s a brightness as we see their concerns for each other,” observed Kaminski. “You see Donovan’s concern over what life Abel is going to encounter back home. The possibilities of Abel being punished for possible collaboration with the FBI could be severe. The brightness with concerns evident is quite different from when their relationship started out in the shadows. Our approach was to set the proper environment for great actors like these to do what they do best.”
Spielberg and Kaminski have a knack for doing their best in tandem. “In some ways, our relationship has not changed,” related Kaminski. “What I see from Steven is the continuous ability to be invigorated by material. He puts his creative thinking towards how to make characters more human, better—not necessarily more entertaining. He’s collaborating with everybody—me, the actors, screenwriters—to do justice to the characters through the moviemaking process.”
For Bridge of Spies, Kaminski went with a Panavision film camera, opting to shoot anamorphic with Hawk lenses to realize the desired look. “The lenses are not so perfect and pristine, which made them a fit for that time period, the Cold War era, we were trying to create.”
Towards that end, Kaminski cited the contributions of production designer Adam Stockhausen. “He’s a great artist and a great asset to us,” said Kaminski of Stockhausen. “He didn’t have the luxury of constructing a huge set. Instead he had to create worlds of the 1950s within a limited budget. He discovered a neighborhood in Poland that was touched by World War II. It was a well preserved neighborhood from 1945. Soviets did not go to that part of the city so nothing had been destroyed after World War II. We were able to incorporate what was there and then build on top of it. Adam had a vision to turn something like this into what we needed. That kind of eye is so valuable to Steven and me—particularly from a production designer who truly understands the story we’re trying to tell. Adam also managed to find some locations in Berlin that worked for the exteriors after World War II.”
Stockhausen is a two-time Oscar nominee, winning earlier this year for Best Achievement in Production Design (shared with set decorator Anna Pinnock) on the strength of the Wes Anderson-directed The Grand Budapest Hotel. Stockhausen’s first nomination came in 2014 for the Steve McQueen-helmed Best Picture Oscar winner 12 Years a Slave (shared with set decorator Alice Baker).
This is the sixth in a multi-part series with future installments of The Road To Oscar slated to run in the weekly SHOOT>e.dition, The SHOOT Dailies, SHOOT’s January print issue (and PDF versions) and on SHOOTonline.com. The series will appear weekly through the Academy Awards. The 88th Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Thursday, January 14, 2016. The Oscars will be held on Sunday, February 28, 2016, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network at 7 pm ET/4 pm PT. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.
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