This week’s installment of our The Road To Oscar series spotlights a first-time Oscar nominated composer, a three-time production designer nominee, and a costume designer who has now amassed 11 nominations and three Academy Award wins thus far in her career.
The latter is Colleen Atwood whose latest nomination is for director Rob Marshall’s Into the Woods (Disney). Atwood has won Best Achievement In Costume Design Oscars thrice–twice for Marshall-helmed films: Chicago in 2003 and Memoirs of a Geisha in 2006. Her third Oscar came in 2011 for the Tim Burton-directed Alice In Wonderland.
Atwood’s seven other Oscar nominations were for Little Women in 1995; Beloved in 1999; Sleepy Hollow in 2000; Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events in 2005; Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in 2008; Nine (from director Marshall) in 2010; and Snow White and the Huntsman in 2013.
Another collaboration with Marshall–Tony Bennett: An American Classic–won Atwood an Emmy Award for Outstanding Costumes for a Variety/Music Program or a Special in 2007.
Regarding her latest Oscar nod, Atwood observed that Into the Woods by its very nature posed a major challenge for her as a costume designer. She had to do justice to the individual fairy tales in the project while keeping an eye on the unified big picture. Into the Woods is the movie adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical (from Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine), a modern, magical, heartfelt twist on several beloved fairy tales. Lapine also wrote the screenplay for the film which interweaves the stories of Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), Little Red Riding Hood (Lila Crawford), Rapunsel (MacKenzie Mauzy), and Jack and the Beanstalk (Daniel Huttlestone)–all tied together by an original tale of a baker and his wife (James Corden, Emily Blunt), their wish to begin a family and their interaction with the witch (Meryl Streep) who has put a curse on them.
“Each fairy tale had to have its own world in the movie,” observed Atwood. “But at the same time all the fairy tales had to work together in one world. The costumes had to contribute to realizing that fine balance.”
Helping her to devise the costuming was Marshall’s “theatrical process of rehearsal,” related Atwood. “His rehearsals are like a theater production. He pulls the team together and you see their movements in performance. From that, you can visualize what the costume can do for each person. It helps us to design and build the costume that will work best for each actor.”
Atwood’s collaborations with Marshall have thus far yielded four Oscar nominations for Achievement In Costume Design. As for how she and Marshall connected to begin with, Atwood recalled, “I knew who Rob was from Broadway, though I didn’t really know him. I was working on Planet of the Apes [2001] a long time ago and got a phone call from Rob himself. He said he admired my work and would like to meet me. We got together and he told me he was going to do Chicago. We had a great talk about the costumes. I had always wanted to do a musical but never had the opportunity. I eventually got that chance thanks to Rob.”
Originally she was to come to New York to do a run through of Chicago on Sept. 12, 2001. But the terrorist 9/11 terrorist attacks scuttled that schedule. “Two weeks later I wound up coming to New York where I found Rob and three people in a room with a few tables and chairs. Rob laid out all the choreography, the blocking of scenes. It was the most impressive three hours I’ve spent in my work. Rob was absolutely brilliant. Ever since then, I have loved and admired what Rob does. Rob is gifted, talented and hard working. He creates an atmosphere of collaboration.”
As for what her most recent Oscar nomination means to her, Atwood said simply, “It’s gratifying that my fellow costume designers in the [Motion Picture] Academy enjoy the work I’m doing. It also reflects the good fortune I’ve had to get the opportunity to do this kind of work. Into the Woods is a very smart piece of work. Stephen Sondheim is incredibly creative and to have that kind of material to work with is a gift.”
Into the Woods additionally picked up Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress (Meryl Streep) and Production Design (production designer Dennis Gassner, set decorator Anna Pinnock), And earlier this week, Atwood won the Costume Designers Guild Award for Excellence in Fantasy Film on the strength of her work on Into the Woods.
Nathan Crowley
Earning his third career Best Achievement in Production Design Oscar nomination is Nathan Crowley for the Christopher Nolan-directed Interstellar (Paramount Pictures). Production designer Crowley shares this latest nomination with set decorator Gary Fettis.
Interstellar takes place in the near future after a blight on Earth has left many food sources extinct. Matthew McConaughey plays a widowed pilot-turned farmer who has to leave behind his young son and daughter for a space mission through a wormhole to planets that might be fit to sustain humanity. While the saga is fraught with astrophysics surrounding a high-stakes journey to another galaxy, Interstellar at its core is the story of a father and his children who are separated by circumstance–and a time continuum in which the kids age and the dad doesn’t. Central to the film is the disconnection between McConaughey and his daughter (played by Mackenzie Foy as a young girl, and then Jessica Chastain who has grown into adulthood and become an astrophysicist also working toward the human race’s survival).
All three of Crowley’s Academy Award nominations have come for Nolan films, the first being The Prestige in 2007 (shared with set decorator Julie Ochipini) and then for The Dark Knight in 2009 (shared with set decorator Peto Lando).
Interstellar was full of daunting challenges. From a design perspective, Crowley cited the interior of the black hole in the end sequence where “Coop [portrayed by Matthew McConaughey] dove into the black hole and finds timelines existing on a X-Y-Z axis. We had to think about how do you visualize and realize a room that could move through a series of timelines on three axes.”
Key in meeting the challenges of Interstellar, continued Crowley, was the collaborative working relationship he enjoyed with Nolan and such artisans as VFX supervisor Paul Franklin. “It was a constant conversation of coming up with solutions and fine tuning them, from putting set pieces into a landscape–doing it physically rather than digitally to get the right feeling for the place–to in another instance creating a practical set which could be digitally extended.”
Crowley had just finished Behind Enemy Lines when he and Nolan, who had wrapped Memento, first came together to work on Insomnia for Warner Bros. “We just got along almost instantly,” recollected Crowley. “We found out that we grew up in the same neighborhood. He’s five years younger. One of my best friends lived three doors down from Chris’ family. We didn’t know each other back then but we had a lot of shared connections.”
Connecting with Nolan has been a dream come true for Crowley. “He’s a director who does unique stuff on such a grand scale,” assessed Crowley. “He likes to do large scale films–the kind of films that have a big canvas, the kind of films that I love doing, that represent an amazing opportunity for a production designer. And Chris is relentless when he pursues his creative vision. No matter what the obstacles, he works with you to figure things out. He doesn’t give in. We figure out ways to realize things regardless of how difficult it might seem. He doesn’t compromise his vision. The Dark Knight, for example, was the Batman film we wanted to make.
Crowley added, “Prestige was one of my favorite films. I loved the magic, the tricks, the work that Chris and I did. But this one [Interstellar] has taken over from that. It was more personal than any of the other films we’ve made together. And it’s a great feeling to be recognized for this work with an Oscar nomination.”
Interstellar earned a total of five Academy Award nominations, the others coming for Best Original Score (composer Hans Zimmer), Sound Editing (Richard King), Sound Mixing (Garry A. Rizzo, Gregg Landaker, Mark Weingarten) and Visual Effects (Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter, Scott Fisher).
Jóhann Jóhannsson
Garnering his very first career Oscar nomination for Best Original Score is composer Jóhann Jóhannsson for the James Marsh-directed The Theory of Everything (Focus Features). The film tells the remarkable story of renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde. The Theory of Everything is based on Jane Wilde Hawking’s memoir, “Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen.” The movie has earned a total of five Academy Award nominations, the others being for Best Picture, Best Leading Actor (Eddie Redmayne), Best Leading Actress (Felicity Jones) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Anthony McCarten).
Jóhannsson, who earlier won the Golden Globe for Best Original Score on the strength of The Theory of Everything, recalled that he first met director Marsh on “a small Danish documentary he was a consultant on a few years ago. He got to know my music and had me in mind when he got around to making The Theory of Everything.”
Jóhannsson said he was brought onto Theory “fairly late. They had a rough cut already so the film had a shape to it. I was able to watch the film, get a really good sense of the mood, performances and characters. I really absorbed the mood and then set out to enhance it, creating a kind of sound identity for the film, a sonic musical DNA that runs through it.”
Among the composer’s concerns was “doing justice to the scope of the film. It’s a film that spans decades. It’s about a man’s whole life, various events, goals, milestones, how relationships happen, deepen and break away. This is a love story which requires that the music have a certain restraint. You have to be careful about not laying it on too thick with a trowel so to speak. Being emotional yet restrained with the music is a tricky balance.”
Helping Jóhannsson attain that balance was his working relationship with Marsh. “I’ve been lucky enough to work with very knowledgeable directors who are attuned to music–filmmakers like James Marsh and Denis Villeneuve [whom the composer worked with on such films as Prisoners]. They have a strong sense of music which makes for an effortless collaboration–they understand the obstacles, the challenges and what’s needed to do justice to a story musically.”
This is the 15th installment of The Road To Oscar multi-part series appearing in the weekly SHOOT>e.dition, The SHOOT Dailies and on SHOOTonline.com. The series will appear weekly through the Academy Awards. The Oscars will be held on Sunday, February 22, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network.
