“Halloween” has been far more treat than trick for director Michael Spiller. In January he won the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award for best comedy series director on the strength of the “Halloween” episode of Modern Family. And last month, “Halloween” garnered Spiller his first career Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing For A Comedy Series. His nom is one of 17 for Modern Family this year.
At press time, Spiller was slated to direct his first episode for season three of Modern Family. He is scheduled thus far to helm five episodes of the hit show for the upcoming season. Also on his docket are three episodes of Apartment 23, a new sitcom on ABC.
Furthermore, Spiller has diversified more deeply into commercials via production house Lookout Entertainment, most recently wrapping a three-spot package for Purolator oil filters out of Grey New York, the comedic premise centered on unlikely mechanics like a grandmother, a geisha, and an Amish man performing oil changes on an old pickup truck. If they can do it, anyone can as each is asked questions off camera by Spiller, adding to the people appeal and humor of the campaign. Originally produced for the web, the commercials play so well that the work is slated to get some TV airtime as well.
Spiller is gratified over the multifaceted opportunities emerging for him as a director. And he’s especially gratified to now be an Emmy nominee. “The nomination is a huge honor,” he related. “Just as with the DGA Award, I was happy just to be nominated. The Emmy has such cache. Everybody recognizes the Emmy. I even have old classmates from high school emailing to congratulate me.
“Plus,” he quipped, “thanks to the nomination, it will be nice not having to scramble to get into Emmy parties.”
However, there was some scrambling to realize a scene in “Halloween” in which Mitchell Pritchett (played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson) shows up at work as Spider-Man only to be embarrassed that he is just one of a few geeks in costume. The sequence required two separate locations on the Fox backlot–the hallway of a conference room, and a wall for Spidey to climb down–as well as a bathroom (for the Mitchell character to change in) which had to be built on stage. This logistical complexity, including additional construction–atypical for a sitcom, said Spiller–were needed in order to properly support the humor of the situation called for in the script.
Double dip Kramer Morgenthau, ASC, is no stranger to Emmy nominations, having earned them for best cinematography in 2005 for the telefilm The Five People You Meet In Heaven, in ’09 for an episode of the hour-long series Life on Mars and in ’10 for an episode of the one-hour series FlashForward.
Still, though, this Emmy-nominated year is a bit different in that Morgenthau is the only cinematographer to receive two nominations–one for the season one finale (“A Return to Normalcy”) of Boardwalk Empire on HBO, the other for the HBO movie Too Big To Fail. The latter was nominated for Outstanding Cinematography For A Miniseries or Movie, the former for Outstanding Cinematography For A Single-Camera Series.
“To be nominated twice is definitely pretty wild,” related Morgenthau. “Getting nominated is a surprise each year. It’s nothing you expect. You submit six months prior and then you don’t really think about it. If you’re lucky, one morning people are calling you up. Each nomination is a bit different in that you think back on the latest project which is often quite different from others you were recognized for before. What’s the same is the feeling that the Emmy nomination is a tremendous, humbling honor. There are so many great artists working in television and to be recognized by your peers with a nomination is very special.”
Particularly special for Morgenthau was getting the opportunity to collaborate with director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile) on Too Big To Fail, which chronicles the 2008 financial meltdown (and earned 11 Emmy nominations in the process). “Curtis is one of the great iconic American directors and to work with him for the first time was a huge thrill,” affirmed Morgenthau. “The subject matter was very challenging. Cinematically, though, it’s a bunch of people talking, not exactly an action movie. But to be nominated for your cinematography on something so serious, so grown up and not flashy visually is extra special. We approached it not like a documentary but rather as depicting things in a visually interesting manner that first and foremost had to be very natural and realistic. We went with some expressive qualities to the lighting that kind of brought out the story more. We had an amazing cast including William Hurt [nominated for a lead actor Emmy], Paul Giamatti and James Woods [both nominated for best supporting actor].
Asked how he got the dream gig with Hanson, Morgenthau conjectured that having successfully shot for HBO on Boardwalk Empire helped as did a collaborative relationship with line producer Ezra Swerdlow who’s teamed with Hanson in the past and on Too Big To Fail. Serendipity also came into play as Morgenthau found himself in an airport security line with Hanson for a flight to N.Y. Morgenthau recognized and approached Hanson. It turned out that the director had recently seen Morgenthau’s reel. “We made a human connection that day, which was quite fortuitous.”
As for Boardwalk Empire, Morgenthau had worked with director Tim Van Patten previously–albeit eight years ago on a TV pilot. But Van Patten sought out the DP for an episode of Boardwalk Empire, and then for this past season’s finale, for which Morgenthau garnered the Emmy nom. (Boardwalk Empire tallied 18 Emmy nominations this year.) “It meant a lot to me to get a call out of the blue after eight years from someone as talented as Tim–he’s also an executive producer on the show [Boardwalk Empire] and I’ve admired his work on The Sopranos. The season finale of a new series is inherently a big challenge. There are a lot of different storylines to give some closure to in just an hour. Tim is an inspiring collaborator.”
Van Patten also earned an Emmy nomination this year for his direction of the “Winter Is Coming” pilot for the acclaimed HBO drama series Game of Thrones. At press time, SHOOT reached Morgenthau in Northern Ireland where he was lensing the premiere episode of season two for Game of Thrones. He is scheduled to then shoot a second episode, both being directed by Alan Taylor.
Morgenthau is also experienced in commercials, having shot regularly over the years for director Luis Gerard, who’s currently repped through Uber Content. Morgenthau, who is represented for features, TV, commercials and other fare via UTA (United Talent Agency), has a filmography which also includes spot collaborations with director Spike Lee for such clients as State Farm, Frito-Lay, Mountain Dew and a notable Telecom Italia job shot in South Africa with Nelson Mandela discussing the need for his people to have access to telecommunications and the information super highway. At the same time, Morgenthau was filming a documentary there about the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.
“I love doing commercials,” said Morgenthau. “A feature film is like a novel, TV like a short story, and a commercial like a haiku. They’re all fun because they are three different creatively challenging worlds. Commercials are very much about the storytelling process boiled down to its poetic essence.”
21 The HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce led this year’s Emmy nominations parade with 21, including for Outstanding Miniseries or Movie, Outstanding Directing For A Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special (Todd Haynes), Outstanding Writing For A Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special (Haynes and Jon Raymond), Outstanding Actress in Title Role (Kate Winslet), and Supporting Actors (Brian F. O’Byrne, Marc Winningham, Melissa Leo).
The five-part miniseries was a production of Killer Films/John Wells Productions in association with HBO Miniseries and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Killer’s Christine Vachon, an executive producer on Mildred Pierce, said, “It was tremendously gratifying after all the work we’ve done on Mildred Pierce to wake up one morning and find out that not only had we been nominated but nominated twenty-one times.”
Vachon is no stranger to the Emmy Award winners’ circle as she served as an exec producer on This American Life for Showtime which in ’08 garnered Emmy Awards for Outstanding Nonfiction Series and for Outstanding Direction For Nonfiction Programming (Christopher Wilcha, Adam Beckman). Nor is Vachon a stranger to director Haynes as they have collaborated on such past notable theatrical features as Far From Heaven, Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not There.
After the latter film, Vachon recalled she and Haynes discussing “doing something for television.” That “something” became Mildred Pierce.
While the 1945 movie of the same title starring Joan Crawford is considered a classic, Vachon said that the approach for the miniseries was not to do a remake of that film. “It is an iconic movie and has a tremendous number of fans, people who can recite the dialogue from memory,” said Vachon. “But in order for this story to be successful as a miniseries today, we had to offer a completely different take. We went back to the source material and built from there. The original movie was film noir. I remember getting halfway through the novel one weekend and calling Todd to ask ‘when does the murder happen?” He said something like, ‘Don’t you get it? There is no murder.'” (The miniseries follows novelist James M. Cain’s original story, dispensing with the murder plotline that was created for the ’45 film for which Crawford won the Best Actress Oscar).
Vachon said that perhaps the biggest challenge posed by the miniseries was tied to its length and scope. “It’s a six-hour drama which entailed an eighty-day shooting schedule,” she noted. “For Todd [Haynes] and Kate [Winslet] it was like running a marathon.”
The lengthy race, though, proved successful as reflected in widespread critical acclaim and underscored by the Emmy nominations.
Mildred Pierce marked Haynes’ directing debut in the TV program arena, yet his helming touch has been evident on the “small screen” in shorter form. He has to his credit, for example, the high-profile Heinecken commercial titled “Share.” Haynes continues to be on Moxie Pictures‘ roster of feature filmmakers who are available for select spots and branded content.
Vachon too has a connection to Moxie. Earlier this year (SHOOTonline, 1/12), it was announced that Killer Films, headed by producers Vachon and Pam Koffler, had partnered with Moxie, under the aegis of CEO Robert Fernandez and president/director Danny Levinson, to form talent firm KillerMoxie Management.
Great Scotts 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), 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–see Emmy spot story), 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 2011 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 Scott Free’s nonfiction 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.”
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 explained, “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 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 July 1-3, 1863, by 165,000 troops in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania. Casualties totaled nearly 50,000–the most of any single battle in the Civil War.
First-time nominee On the basis of the miniseries The Kennedys, David Moxness, CSC, earned his first career Emmy nomination–in the category of Outstanding Cinematography For A Miniseries Or Movie. The Kennedys was originally slated for the History channel which ultimately decided not to run it; the miniseries was subsequently picked up by the Reelz channel.
But beyond that mini-controversy, The Kennedys–which wound up earning a total of 10 Emmy nominations, including for Outstanding Miniseries or Movie–posed several prime challenges to cinematographer Moxness.
“For one, it’s a huge undertaking, a historic story. The Kennedys are the royal family of the United States and you have to live up to that standard,” related Moxness, a.k.a. “Moxy,” who originally envisioned shooting on film given that the project was a period piece. “Film had the right feel and aesthetic but as we got into prep, budgets started to come together. And though it wasn’t solely a budget consideration, it became clear that film would not be available to us as an option. So then came the consideration of how do we treat this properly and get the right feeling and aesthetic in a modern digital world.”
The decision was to go with the Sony F35 camera supplied through Panavision and equipped with ARRI Ultra Prime lenses.
Another challenge, continued Moxness, was how to best schedule and coordinate the shooting of an eight-hour miniseries. The producers opted to lens it in eight one-hour blocks, meaning that when in a location or environment, anything required from those eight hours needed to be shot then and there.
“Managing that amount of material collectively in each location entailed some extensive coordination and planning,” Moxness said.
Moxness, who’s represented by Dattner Dispoto and Associates, regards the Emmy nomination as a high honor. “It’s humbling and wonderful to be recognized by industry peers in this manner. I’m happy for the project to receive so many nominations.”
Being an Emmy nominee builds Moxness’ resumé in the American awards show circuit. Back in ’07, he won an ASC Award for Outstanding Achievement In Cinematography For An Episodic TV series for the Smallville episode titled “Arrow.”
