For Tim Van Patten, Boardwalk Empire is one of three series that holds a special place in his heart. The 15-time Emmy nominee earned his latest TV Academy recognition for the Boardwalk Empire finale, the episode titled “Eldorado,” which capped the show’s five-year run on HBO. He is again in the running for the Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series Emmy. Boardwalk Empire has thus garnered Van Patten at least one Emmy nom each of its five seasons, including a directing win in 2013 for the episode titled “To The Lost.” (He also was an Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series nominee that same year for the “Margate Sands” episode of Boardwalk Empire.)
Asked to reflect on Boardwalk Empire—for which he has served as a director, EP and writer—now that it’s in his career rear-view mirror, Van Patten related, “It seems far back in the distance already. That’s show business. We’re gypsy families. You swear you can never live without them and you wind up finding another family. But in the case of Boardwalk Empire, very rarely to you get to have the kind of experience I’ve enjoyed—working closely with people I not only respected but whom I had prior relationships with, and deep friendships. I was home for a change in New York. I had my hand in many aspects, happily so. We were able to surround ourselves with the most talented people we worked with over the course of our careers in New York. There’s a great shorthand when you assemble those people. I will miss that.”
The swan song episode, “Eldorado,” posed its own set of challenges. “Everyone wants to give a show like Boardwalk Empire a proper farewell,” said Van Patten. “Often you’re left holding too much story in hour hands when you get to that point. You have to write and finesse a script that finds the show best. It’s never easy. Fortunately we had a show where we had a lot of experienced writers, a great production team. All hands were on deck. We benefited from tremendous teamwork. I wouldn’t have been able to do this episode, much less get an Emmy nomination without first A.D. Jude Gorjanc, the script by [series creator/EP] Terence Winter and [EP] Howard Korder, the entire crew. Steve Buscemi is a great number one on the call sheet. He owned his role throughout the series. In the last episode, we asked him to do a lot, to be slightly off character. He was so invested in that final episode. It was one of the great pleasures of my professional life to watch him work.”
Regarding the other two alluded to shows in his career that carry a special significance for Van Patten, he cited his experience as a regular cast member on The White Shadow, and his work, primarily directing, on The Sopranos. Van Patten observed, “The Sopranos changed my career. I learned so much from [series creator] David Chase in regards to story, professionalism and discipline.”
The White Shadow, noted Van Patten, was special because “I was a regular on that show working with my mentor [series creator] Bruce Paltrow. He gave me my first acting job and was responsible for my directing career.”
The other Emmy nominations netted by Van Patten for Boardwalk Empire were: Outstanding Drama Series in 2011 and 2012, and Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series in 2014 (for the “Farewell Daddy Blues” episode).
Van Patten’s very first Emmy nom came in 2000 for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series (with Terence Winter) for the “Pine Barrens” episode of The Sopranos. This was followed by Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series nominations in 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2006 for The Sopranos. Also in ‘04, Van Patten was a directing nominee in Comedy Series for an episode of Sex and the City.
In 2010, Van Patten won an Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries for The Pacific; that same year he was nominated for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special on the basis of The Pacific. And in 2011 Van Patten was a Best Director for a Drama Series nominee on the strength of the “Winter is Coming” pilot for Game of Thrones.
As for life after Boardwalk Empire, Van Patten said he’s dabbling in some prospective feature film projects and hopes to have some “good news” on the TV front in the coming months, noting that he remains “happily” under contract at HBO.
Tom Shankland
The Missing, a Starz/BBC miniseries, helped to fill a missing element in the career of director Tom Shankland, spurring opportunities in the U.S. market for the three-time BAFTA Award nominee. Earning Shankland his first career Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special, The Missing made a major impression in the American TV community, ultimately resulting in several plum U.S. assignments for the helmer.
Shankland landed the pilot for Wicked City, which got picked up by ABC TV. He also directed an episode of HBO’s The Leftovers. And at press time Shankland was in Baltimore where he was directing a pair of episodes for Netflix’s House of Cards.
Yet while The Missing has put his recent flurry of American activity into motion, Shankland puts the miniseries, particularly the Emmy nomination, into perspective. “Getting the call that I had been nominated was thrilling,” he recalled. “It means obviously quite a lot to earn such an honor and it’s a good excuse to celebrate. But it doesn’t belong just to me. You can get through eight hours of miniseries with the sort of stamina and focus needed only if you have amazing people around you. When I got the nomination call, it made me think of the great work of the DP, the designer, the cast headed by James Nesbitt and Frances O’Connor, writers Harry and Jack Williams. The nomination is vindication of everyone’s work on the show. No matter how much a director’s ego might like to think you did it yourself, that’s clearly not the case. Everyone’s work on the show is what’s being nominated and recognized.”
Nesbitt and O’Connor star as Tony and Emily Hughes, the parents of a boy missing in France. Tcheky Karyo portrays Julien Baptiste, a retired French detective put in charge of finding the youngster.
At first, Shankland wasn’t enthused over the story. “It sounded so distressing, so sad. But then I started reading the scripts [the first four had already been written] and was completely mesmerized by the questions raised by every scene. What Jack and Harry achieved in the writing cast a spell on me. I felt completely hooked on the idea of creating that same experience for the audience.”
Helping Shankland get the opportunity to direct The Missing was a short film, Bait, he did some time ago about a father who briefly loses track of his son after having left him alone in a cafe for an hour. “It was quite moving and reassured me that I had a heart after all,” quipped Shankland. Bait was nominated for Best Short at the 2000 BAFTA Film Awards.
For Shankland, the biggest challenge posed by The Missing was maintaining an emotional balance to do justice to the story. “I didn’t want it to tilt into a totally emotionally distressing experience for the audience. I wanted to convey what I got from my first reading of the material—this fascinating, fantastic, atmospheric mysterious thriller. When delving into some of the more emotionally distressing moments, I didn’t want the audience recoiling. I wanted to try to create an atmosphere where you felt intrigued rather than just so disturbed you couldn’t go on. Jimmy Nesbitt and Frances O’Connor gave brilliant emotionally truthful performances. We watch them go through difficult moments with the camera without overtly leaning towards their suffering. I didn’t want to rub the audience’s noses in the distress.
The loss of a child is harrowing for any parent but I didn’t want to be overly indulgent in that. The directing challenge was to somehow make this mystery more than just a story about suffering.”
Christopher Manley, ASC
Christopher Manley, ASC, last month earned his fifth career Emmy nomination, this one in the Outstanding Cinematography For a Limited Series or Movie category on the strength of The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe (Lifetime), the miniseries directed by Laurie Collyer. His first four cinematography nominations came in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013, all for Mad Men, the AMC series on which he not only evolved as a cinematographer but also successfully diversified into directing.
“I’m sad that Mad Men ended,” said Manley. “We had become very much like a family on that show. At the same time I was so happy the way the series was resolved. I think it was gratifying to the viewers in terms of all the characters. As gratifying as it was, though, it was also a little unnerving from a career standpoint. What’s next? What do you do after that?”
Manley has since answered that seemingly daunting question—successfully so as evidenced by the Emmy nomination. “I had passed on a lot of projects presented to me but then I got the chance to work with Laurie [director Collyer]. I liked Laurie so much when we met and got a sense that we would have a great collaboration. She had directed a couple of great movies—Sherrybaby and Sunlight Jr., getting amazing performances from her actors. I knew that she would be the perfect choice for recreating characters based on real people and was drawn to her for this Marilyn Monroe project. We had a lot of great conversations, exchanged a lot of emails for several months before the project got a start date. There’s been so much written and said, so many projects about Marilyn. This one, though, was different from anything that had been done, delving into her mother’s mental illness, her relationship with her mother, and her own mental illness which she believed she inherited. The miniseries covers her life from childhood in the early 1930s to her death in 1962.”
In terms of challenges posed by the limited series, Manley related, “We had to find ways to properly delineate the different decades, the different periods of her life and the way she transforms from Norma Jean to Marilyn to the extent that the studio helped create her and how she created her own persona as Marilyn which she later took ownership of.”
The technical challenge was getting a start date later than anticipated, after the decision had already been made to shoot in Toronto. Manley found himself in the midst of winter trying to shoot Toronto for Los Angeles. “Exterior scenes often had to be written as interiors,” he said, “but we managed overall.” At the end, four days of shooting in L.A. were scheduled—for beach scenes and a couple of swimming pool scenes in Palm Springs.
Manley shot The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe with the ARRI ALEXA. “I love the camera,” he shared. “I’ve been shooting mostly with the ALEXA for the past five years or so.” Manley noted that Mad Men transitioned from film to the ALEXA in season five.
Beyond his most recent Emmy nomination, also underscoring that there is life after Mad Men for Manley is his lensing of season three of Masters of Sex. He also has directed an episode of the Showtime series.
Asked to reflect on Mad Men now that the iconic series has wrapped, Manley recalled that when he first came aboard the show, he wasn’t all that confident that he would last. “They had four different DPs in season one [with Phil Abraham shooting the pilot and setting the tone for the series]. I was the fifth they had when season two began. It was rough at first as I got to learn the show. But thankfully I learned that [series creator] Matt Weiner’s taste and mine were really well aligned. It became easier to absorb and recreate the style that he preferred because it was my preference as well. I went from surviving to thriving on that show.”
Part of that thriving was getting the opportunity to direct four episodes of Mad Men, the first being “Commissions and Fees” during season five. “That was the episode in which Lane Pryce committed suicide,” recalled Manley. “It was a heavy episode and I got the chance to direct it because it worked best for the production schedule right before the Christmas holiday. It’s an experience that meant a lot to me and that extended my creative reach.”
Gary Baum
Last month Gary Baum picked up his sixth and seventh career Emmy nominations, both in the Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-camera Series category for the Mike & Molly (CBS) “Checkpoint Joyce” episode directed by Victor Gonzalez, and the “Con-Troversy” episode of The Millers (CBS) directed by James Burrows.
Burrows, a lauded Emmy-winning series creator, producer and director (Taxi, Cheers, Will & Grace, Frasier), has played an integral role in Baum’s career. The cinematographer’s first three Emmy nominations were all for series (Gary Unmarried, 2 Broke Girls, Mike & Molly) episodes directed by Burrows.
Baum recalled first meeting Burrows on the set of Friends some 20 years ago. Burrows was directing and Baum was a camera assistant at the time. Baum moved up the industry ladder to operator, reconnecting with Burrows on Will & Grace. When Tony Askins, ASC, retired and recommended that camera operator Baum succeed him as DP on Will & Grace, executive producer/director Burrows afforded Baum that opportunity. Burrows later directed the pilot for Mike & Molly, bringing Baum into the fold on that show.
And Burrows and Baum will continue their collaborative relationship this fall on the NBC comedy pilot Crowded starring Patrick Warburton and Carrie Preston.
Also continuing is Baum’s run of Emmy nominations on Mike & Molly. “Checkpoint Joyce” marks the fourth consecutive year that Baum has secured an Emmy nom for the series.
However, this past season at the same time marked a departure from the norm for Baum on Mike & Molly. On the previous seasons of the hit show, Baum deployed Sony F23 cameras. However this past year he switched to the newer Sony F55 with a 35mm sensor. He explained at the time, “More and more we’re incorporating certain visual effects into the show.” Baum reasoned that the F55 will prove helpful in this and other respects.
Baum told SHOOT that the F55 has proven to be “an important upgrade for us in terms of lenses. We’ve been able to use the Panavision 11:1 cine lenses, the same lenses used on their film cameras. The sensor of the Sony F55 is very close to the size of 35mm cameras. This has afforded us a little more of a cinematic look in terms of falloff and depth of field. Another breakthrough is we all went to a file-based situation, using Sony SxS cards, making things a lot easier for editorial. All in all this has afforded visual effects and post more flexibility, using a larger format and having a higher rate of pixels.”
Baum added that the F55 is also being used to shoot The Millers. “The F55 is state of the art as far as we’re concerned in our multi-camera situation,” assessed Baum.
For his Emmy-nominated “Con-Troversy” episode of The Millers, Baum said a fantasy sequence with a medieval feel gave a different look to the series, one that had to be meshed with the rest of the show.
As for “Checkpoint Joyce,” this Mike & Molly episode has Mike (Billy Gardell) having to arrest Joyce (Swoosie Kurtz) when she refuses to take a breathalyzer test at a DUI checkpoint. “We had a mix of interior and exterior work—some of the car photography had Swoosie Kurtz on stage,” recalled Baum.
“And we had a string of cars, lights and the checkpoint outside. We shot our own plates and blended the two. The good part was we were able to photograph our own plates rather than have it done by a second party. We were able to adjust everything to exact specifications.”
This is the second year that Baum has scored a pair of Emmy nominations. The first time was in 2012 for the 2 Broke Girls pilot and the “Victoria Can’t Drive” episode of Mike & Molly.
Erik Henry
For visual effects supervisor Erik Henry, his third career Emmy nomination is bittersweet. He is already a two-time Emmy winner—for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries for John Adams (HBO) in 2008, and last year for Outstanding Special and Visual Effects in a Supporting Role for the “I” episode of Black Sails (Starz).
Henry now finds himself nominated again, for the second consecutive year for Black Sails—this time for the season 2 finale, “XVIII.”
However, unlike last year when Black Sails won for Supporting VFX, the 2015 nomination comes in the Outstanding Special Visual Effects category. Henry can’t quite fathom why the category switch was in order. He contended that like last year’s nomination, the effects delivered for Black Sails’ “XVIII” were supporting in nature—in which case he and his VFX ensemble would be in strong contention for an Emmy win. But instead—and for him, inexplicably—Black Sails is in an Outstanding Special Visual Effects category which pits it against such high-profile competition as “The Dance of the Dragons” episode of Game of Thrones.
Henry said it’s akin to the VFX Oscar race in 2004 pitting the supporting VFX work of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World against the effects-intensive work in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Since the Motion Picture Academy has but one visual effects category, it promotes the comparison of apples and oranges. “Master and Commander is exactly like what we do and it faced an uphill battle to beat The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. History had shown that Master and Commander couldn’t beat them because of dragons, battles, the eye candy, and the marquee role that visual effects played in The Lord of the Rings. But the Emmys potentially have one visual effects category for Master and Commander and another for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Still we were put in the same category as Game of Thrones and we face the same uphill battle against dragons and giants.”
While disappointed over the category Black Sails wound up in this year as opposed to last, Henry said he’s gratified that visual effects work on the Starz series was nominated again for an Emmy.
Originally written as a prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel “Treasure Island,” Black Sails is grounded in the world of reality. “That’s the challenge of the show in terms of visual effects,” observed Henry. “You have to be seamless. We’re not doing fantasy. People have seen a ship, they’ve seen a sail or they think they have. Our work is up against the human eye and perceptions. ‘That sail is not moving quite right.’ ‘Does water really do that?’ We do as much as we can for real. But there are times when we have to employ a computer-generated waterscape or sail. That’s an ongoing challenge, blending that work into the live action and making them indistinguishable from each other.”
The season 2 finale posed its own challenge related to the bombardment of a colonial city, Charleston, S.C. “The script had it all happening from the pirate ship point of view in the ocean,” explained Henry.
“We thought wouldn’t it be nice to have a shot where the governor who’s the bad guy in that episode grabs his last few breaths as the town falls down around him. The art department, however, said it was a great idea but they couldn’t go and destroy the town they had built. So we instead suggested that we destroy the CGI bell tower we created on the edge of the town square. The tower was big and built in a way that it had wood, plaster and pieces that rely on each other so that when it collapses, it breaks apart realistically. The plaster on the outside gives way before the wood inside. It was carefully crafted to do what we needed it to do, to have it react in the real way a building would. The destruction of that tower enabled us to show the different point of view we wanted from the town.”
Incidentally, the visual effects in the 2014 Emmy-winning “I” episode of Black Sails were nominated earlier this year for the Visual Effects Society (VES) Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a VFX-Driven Photoreal/Live Action Broadcast Program.
This is the 12th installment of a 14-part series that explores the field of Emmy contenders, and then nominees spanning such disciplines as directing, cinematography, producing, editing, animation and visual effects. The series will then be followed up by coverage of the Creative Arts Emmys ceremony on September 12 and the primetime Emmy Awards live telecast on September 20.
