This is the third installment of SHOOT's continuing series on Academy Award contenders. This week we look at the long and short of the competition with feature film director Sacha Gervasi and his cinematographer on Hitchcock, Jeff Cronenweth, ASC, as well as Oscar-winning DP Janusz Kaminski who lensed the lauded Lincoln. On the short end, SHOOT talks with several of the directors behind Oscar shortlisted animation and documentary shorts.
Oscar-winning cinematographer (Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan) Janusz Kaminski is widely regarded as a contender to return to the Academy Award nominees circle next month on the strength of his work on Lincoln, which continues a remarkable series of collaborations with director Steven Spielberg. In total, Kaminski has earned five Best Cinematography Oscar nominations, four of which were for Spielberg films–the two wins for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, as well as noms for Amistad and earlier this year War Horse. Kaminski's remaining nomination was for the Julian Schnabel-directed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Kaminski's track record with Spielberg also spans such notable films as Munich, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Minority Report, AI Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, War of the Worlds, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Given their ongoing collaborative relationship (the two are next set to team on Robopocalypse), Spielberg and Kaminski communicate via shorthand at this point. Yet even with such familiarity, there are surprises to be had. Of Lincoln, Kaminski related, "For the first time, Steven requested that crew members refer to the cast by their character names–Mr. Lincoln [for Daniel Day Lewis], Mr. Seward [for David Strathairn], and so on. This helped create the desired effect of allowing the actors to be closer to the characters, to be the characters they were portraying."
In turn Kaminski's approach was geared toward being supportive of those characters on every visual front. "The most essential part of my work is to find the proper language, to light the actors, to move the camera in order to create a visual metaphor to support the story," observed Kaminski. "Since President Lincoln was so strong in his point of view, he's portrayed in strong angles, many profiles, to accentuate his strong, sharp features. Working with such an amazing cast was so rewarding. They very much became the characters.
"Steven had beautiful shots that would slowly push through President Lincoln as he delivered lengthy speeches," continued Kaminski. "It was almost like filming a play. We very seldom shot with two or three cameras, maybe just two or three times. The rest was shot with a single camera to capture and be respectful of the performances and the very brilliant and beautifully written words being spoken. Much of this movie deals with Lincoln talking to his colleagues and convincing them to be the ideological motivators to those who were still on the fence about the legislation [the 13th Amendment to outlaw slavery]. But we deal with more than just Lincoln as President. We explore his life as a father and husband."
A beautiful set of The White House was constructed in Richmond, Va., featuring long hallways, several offices and bedrooms. "It was a great setting in which to capture Lincoln's professional and personal life," said Kaminski, noting that an existing structure in Richmond was used as the floor of Congress where debates and political jockeying took place, entailing many people presenting points of view for and against the Amendment. "That portion of the film became very challenging in terms of moving the camera to cover many people and many speaking parts. We had to move carefully and with precision through this real historical, functioning structure and space in Virginia."
While observing that "the sets were beautiful and the wardrobe just amazing," Kaminski said there was considerable restraint involved in the direction and cinematography. "The biggest change for Steven [Spielberg] was to be very restrained with his visual panache. This is a relatively dark movie, not a classic historical drama look. To some degree, this is a non-cinematic movie–we're not doing any tricks or quick cuts. We're not doing anything that would entertain viewers for the sake of entertaining them. It was almost like making a truthful interpretation of what was happening in that particular time and place.
There are lots of shadows because Lincoln was operating in a world of people who were not fully committed to his vision. The story called for a certain look of darkness around him. And of course, we were motivated by the historical era. There was no electricity. Light coming through windows was the illumination during the day for many scenes–not to say that was the only source of light I used. But I followed a logical, naturalistic lighting style to support the story and the time period."
Kaminski related that Spielberg is a tremendous collaborator. "Lately you're reading about Steven and his collaboration with Daniel Day-Lewis," said Kaminski. "The fact is that Steven collaborates with Daniel and the actors just as he does the other departments. He hires people, respects their views and artistry, and expects them to do the best they possibly can. He fosters relationships of total trust and respect. Steven is very respectful of those he works with–me, the actors, the production designers and so forth." One of the key's to Spielberg's success, observed Kaminski, is that he brings talented artists on board "and lets them do their work as opposed to micro-managing them."
Kaminski's own artistry extends beyond cinematography into directing. He has helmed some independent feature work and continues to direct select commercials through production house IM (Independent Media), founded by executive producer Susanne Preissler. He enjoys the spotmaking discipline for the challenge it presents of telling a story in a short time frame as well as its collaborative nature spanning crews and different ad agency creatives and producers. Kaminski brings to his directing assorted lessons and experiences from his work as a cinematographer collaborating with such directors as Spielberg, Schnabel, Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire) and Judd Apatow (Funny People). Over the years, Kaminski has directed spots for such clients as Honda, Reebok, John Deere and Mazda.
Hitchcock
To direct a film about cinematic master Alfred Hitchcock, it stood to reason that a well established director with assorted feature credits would get the gig. Sacha Gervasi didn't fit that profile, readily acknowledging he was a long shot at best to get a crack at the project, particularly one with such marquee actors as Anthony Hopkins portraying Hitchcock and Helen Mirren as his wife and behind-the-scenes filmmaking colleague and confidante Alma Reville. But Gervasi's realistic outlook wound up serving him well. He got his foot in the door based on a well received, highly uncommercial heavy metal documentary he had directed called Anvil: The Story of Anvil. The film had struck a chord with producer Tom Pollock.
"I got a fan letter from Tom two or three years ago when Anvil was on the awards show circuit," recalled Gervasi. "He wrote that he had seen the film, that he hates heavy metal but loved the story. It was a compliment that stayed with me."
That staying power manifested itself on a different, more tangible front when Pollock called Gervasi about Hitchcock. "Tom and the Montecito Picture Company had interviewed 26 directors and I was number 26 or 27 on the list," said Gervasi. "Tom was very up front with me. He said, 'I'm thrilled to meet you. But this picture [Hitchcock] is a big deal with this cast. You realize that selling you as the director for this would be a challenge for us.'
"Since I was essentially told I wasn't getting the job before the interview," continued Gervasi, "I somehow felt incredibly liberated. I told Tom my vision for the film was a love story and that if he wasn't getting Hopkins and Mirren, he shouldn't bother making the picture. I was very specific in my feelings and passion for the film, and I felt very strongly about that vision, about the importance of Alma's story providing insight into her famous husband."
Ultimately, Pollock was convinced. "To my great surprise and delight, Tom made an old school studio head move, going with his instincts and saying I should make the film," said Gervasi. "But once he had hired me, I still needed Hopkins' blessing. I went to meet him and was quite nervous going in. One of the first things Hopkins said to me was that he had seen Anvil three times."
Gervasi got Hopkins' approval, had what he described as a wonderful screenplay by John J. McLaughlin (based on the Stephen Rebello book "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho") and embarked on his dream project. "You do a documentary and then you get the chance of a lifetime," said Gervasi. "I can't think of too many first time narrative feature directors getting to work with Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren–who themselves were working together for the first time."
Seeking to get inside the mind of Hitchcock, Gervasi, McLaughlin and the actors explored the notion of having the Ed Gein character enter into intermittent fantasy-like dialogue with Hopkins as Hitchcock. Gein is the real-life psychotic murderer, grave robber and necrophile who helped inspire the book "Psycho." Michael Wincott was cast as Gein, bringing another dimension to the film, joining an ensemble which included Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh, James D'Arcy as Anthony Perkins, Jessica Biel as Vera Miles, Toni Collette as Hitchcock's assistant Peggy, and Michael Stuhlbarg as agent Lew Wasserman.
Gervasi's film reveals that the real-life Hitchcock took a major gamble on Psycho but that's only a backdrop to the complex, at times unnerving love between Alfred and Alma which in turn is a driving force that fuels their filmmaking artistry.
Another essential contributor to realizing Hitchcock, affirmed Gervasi, was landing cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, ASC, Oscar nominated each of the past two years for The Social Network and then The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, both directed by David Fincher. "Working with Jeff–just like with Anthony and Helen–was an immense honor for a first-time filmmaker," said Gervasi who initially envisioned shooting Hitchcock on film.
"As a test, we shot 35mm film and the RED EPIC side by side," said Gervasi. "The difference was almost indistinguishable. On a tight production timetable–a 35-day shoot with makeup and prosthetics [for Hopkins to look like Hitchcock], digital saved us time as compared to film. And we had to go for any time-saving measure we could. Digital was quite nimble and fluid–you could run the camera longer, have more time with your actors. I wouldn't have felt comfortable doing this, though, without Jeff who's a master in film and digital. He's very well versed in RED."
Experienced on RED indeed–Cronenweth started out lensing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with the RED ONE and then shifted to the RED EPIC as it became more practical to deploy through the availability of special software. Previously for The Social Network he shot with a then state-of-the-art RED camera (featuring the Mysterium-X chip) which filmmaker Steven Soderbegh provided for Fincher.
Cronenweth recalled about Hitchcock, "We had a big debate at the beginning. Sacha wanted to go with film. It seemed like sacrilege not to shoot film for a movie about Alfred Hitchcock. Sacha thought this might be his last opportunity to shoot a major feature on film. As for it being sacrilegious to go with the RED, my contention was that Alfred Hitchcock was always pushing novel concepts and approaches. He'd be the first one to embrace digital photography if it gave him some advantage in storytelling. And there were advantages given the budget, the short shooting schedule, being able to see what we were getting then and there since the believability of the prosthetics was so important to the movie."
Also important was Cronenweth's involvement after principal photography. "It was imperative that I participate in the DI session," explained Cronenweth. "Hopkins is in 90 percent of the scenes and while skin changes color, prosthetics don't. We spent half of our DI session matching and perfecting prosthetics in his face."
Gervasi noted that Cronenweth made major contributions in the DI process, saying that the final projected film output "looked great….Throughout our collaboration, Jeff had my back. His expertise and dedication are incredible."
Cronenweth hadn't planned on immediately taking on another feature. His wife was looking forward to him directing or shooting commercials, enabling him to spend some more family time close to home. "But the script for Hitchcock was excellent," said Cronenweth, "and when my wife read it, she said, 'damn, I guess you have to do it.'"
Cronenweth was also impressed with Gervasi's passion, vision and eagerness for the project. He added that Gervasi offered a great six-degrees-of-separation pitch for him to shoot the movie. "Sacha has been a friend of Jake Scott since childhood," related Cronenweth. "He told me that Jake invited him to the set of Bladerunner as a kid to play around. Jake's dad, Ridley Scott, directed Bladerunner which was shot by my dad [the revered Jordan Cronenweth, ASC]. There was a neat connection to us now working together on Hitchcock."
As for his spotmaking endeavors, Cronenweth and his brother Tim under The Cronenweths moniker and via L.A. production house Untitled have as a duo been directing assorted commercials over the years. Most recently these span such clients as Dodge, Volkswagen, Jaguar, Chrysler and Jeep. The Jaguar job entailed shooting in Chile and Utah.
Jeff Cronenweth also continues to DP commercials, recently lensing Cover Girl featuring Pink and directed by Floria Sigismondi of Believe Media. Cronenweth also shot a visually ambitious Black eau de Parfum spot which became a short film featuring Lady Gaga; the commercial and the short were directed by Steven Klein through RSA Films. Cronenweth also shot a RSA-produced Mountain Dew commercial for director Tony Scott just prior to his recent tragic passing. And Cronenweth continues to lens regularly for director Mark Romanek of Anonymous Content, most recently for Apple's iPhone.
Dual accomplishment
The documentary filmmaking duo of Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing earned an Oscar nomination in 2007 for the feature documentary Jesus Camp, a look at Pentecostal children in America. That same year the directors' Boys of Baraka about struggling pre-teens in Baltimore garnered an Emmy nomination. And in 2010, Grady and Ewing's 12th & Delaware, which chronicled an abortion rights controversy, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
The directing team now has a dual accomplishment on the documentary front–both short and long-form. First, their The Education of Mohammed Hussein was one of eight films to make the Oscar Short Subject Documentary shortlist. The documentary introduces us to the Muslim community in Michigan and the impact an anti-Islamic preacher has on those people.
And then just last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Grady and Ewing's Detropia became one of 15 films to earn inclusion on the 2012 Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature. Ewing describes Detropia as "a poem to Detroit" that was three years in the making, focusing on those residents who despite hard times have opted to stay in Detroit and not be part of the mass exodus of middle class folks from the Motor City.
While Detropia was conceived by Grady and Ewing, HBO came to the directors with The Education of Mohammed Hussein. Ewing noted that HBO exec producer Sheila Nevins "knew of our experience as documentarians in Saudi Arabia and my roots in Detroit. Rachel and I saw this as an opportunity to explore a part of the large Muslim community in Michigan who were not the doctors and lawyers in Dearborn but rather the quieter population that has experienced prejudice against them and maybe is a little fearful of the government. That's where we found the sweet spot for this film as a pastor leads anti-Islamic protests in their backyard. This is an artistic film that is part of a larger conversation–about Islamic phobia, the immigration issue, this country living up to its promise of opportunity for immigrants."
Grady and Ewing produce their documentaries via their Loki Films in New York. They are now looking to more meaningfully diversify into commercials and branded content. The directing team recently signed with spot production house aWHITELABELproduct. Earlier they were repped in the ad arena by production house Rabbit.
"As a storyteller, I see that advertising has gone into more personal stories, more real people, more authenticity," observed Ewing. "Culture at large, especially younger viewers have become more cynical and skeptical when it comes to advertising. The demand for authenticity called out to us. Agencies and advertisers want to have a documentarian's touch in profiling real people. We have something to offer–to bring more humanity and aspects of personal life to help brands connect with people."
Documentary shorts
Joining Grady and Ewing on the Oscar Short Subject Documentary shortlist is another directing duo, Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill. For three of the last four years, short subject documentaries directed by Alpert and O'Neill have made the Oscar shortlist–with one, China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province, earning a 2010 Academy Award nomination. This year the directorial duo made the same shortlist for In Tahir Square: 18 Days of Egypt's Unfinished Revolution. And now on the shortlist for 2012 is Alpert and O'Neill's Redemption, which tells the stories of unemployed people who are left to make a living by collecting cans and bottles off the streets of New York–at a redemption rate of five cents per can. Redemption introduces us to Nuve, a young mother who is supporting not only her two kids but helping her sister and nephews. Then there's Susan, a senior citizen who has to supplement her Social Security income to keep her head above water. There's Walter, a 60-year-old Vietnam War vet and former short order cook whose canning helps keep him afloat. Lily is a Chinese women who shares a one-bedroom apartment with six other people. In the street, she befriends others. In one scene, she passes by people eating at an outdoor cafe and observes that it must be "amazing to enjoy food at a restaurant."
Gaining shortlist status and hopefully a nomination this time around for Redemption means a great deal to Alpert and O'Neill. "Short documentaries by their very nature cover subjects that are largely unnoticed," said Alpert. "When the Academy and your peers recognize your work, the subject matter of the film gains attention. For China's Unnatural Disaster, we pledged to the mothers whose kids died in the earthquake there that we would continue to fight for them, to get people to pay attention to what happened. The Oscar nomination helped in that regard. Now for Redemption, we as New Yorkers are disturbed by what's happening in our city. All of us as documentary filmmakers have spent quite a bit of time in Third World countries–we've all heard of American reporters going to poor countries and seeing people living in garbage dumps. But an army of people in our hometown want to work and can't–they too are living off of other's garbage. To survive they live off of collecting cans. Over the course of the past two years, the number of 'canners' has increased and increased. Our office [Downtown Docs in the Downtown Community Television Center] is downtown in the heart of Chinatown. I started making films 40 years ago, films about our neighborhood and our neighbors. I remember the sweatshops back then with Chinese women bent over sewing machines making shirts and pants. Now our neighborhood is locked up by the Chinese for can collecting. There are a lot of Lillys within a stone's throw of our office."
O'Neill noted, "Jon founded the Downtown Community Television Center 40 years ago. He's been doing this sort of work in the New York community ever since, producing programs about our community we live in and trying to give a voice to the voiceless. Redemption continues this tradition."
Alpert and O'Neill are repped as a directorial team for commercials and branded content by Rascal Films, New York. O'Neill has helmed dozens of spots in recent years via Rascal. "The storytelling challenge is part of what drew us to this," explained O'Neill. "Even our shortest film is much longer than 30 seconds or a minute, which presents a whole different storytelling opportunity and challenge. Agencies and advertisers are realizing that in order to help audiences connect to brands and products, it takes real stories centered on real people in real situations. For us, working with real people in a new venue is exciting."
Meanwhile director Kief Davidson's documentary short, Open Heart, made the Oscar shortlist. The film centers on eight Rwandan children who embark on a life-or-death journey to Sudan in order to have high-risk heart surgery performed at The Salam Centre, Africa's only hospital offering free cardiac procedures for families in need.
Open Heart was sparked by an open mind when Davidson said he "stumbled upon" the story while in Rwanda on a feature documentary about the medical organization Partners In Health. Originally he was set to chronicle an Australian cardiac team that visited Rwanda annually to perform a dozen heart surgeries. "They canceled that year and that's when I was told about this hospital in Sudan which selected for surgery the most at-risk youngsters with rheumatic heart conditions. Initially I was trying to find a way to make that story somehow work within the broader context of the feature documentary. But ultimately this new story felt like its own film. Once I determined this, I went back to my feature film funders and they supported the idea of making a separate short film."
Those backers providing the additional funding were Sundance Institute, The Skoal Foundation, and the Tribeca Film Institute. Open Heart was produced by Davidson's company Urban Landscapes in concert with Whitewater Films and Believe Media. The latter also reps Davidson for commercials and branded content. He has been active in the ad arena with real people and docu-style projects, directing Believe-produced branded content for Absolut, continuing its noted "Blank" campaign, as well as spot packages for Kohl's featuring former (such as Mia Hamm) and current (Lindsay Vonn) Olympic athletes, and another Olympics-themed commercial for Secret deodorant.
"It's been an interesting balance between short and long-form content–one informs the other and both help develop me as a filmmaker," related Davidson who originally was best known for his feature-length documentary work, including The Devil's Miner which earned him and fellow director/writer Richard Ladkani a DGA Award nomination in 2006. In fact, Open Heart marked Davidson's first foray into the short subject documentary form. "If you haven't done this before, you can come in thinking a short would be half the amount of work [compared to a feature-length film], but the reality is that it wasn't at all. A 40-minute film can be harder to make in many ways than a 90-minute film just as a 30 or 60-second commercial or a two-minute branded content piece can be incredibly challenging."
Davidson said his background as a film editor has proved helpful in his tackling different disciplines as a director. "I learned from editing that it's not always what you shoot. It's what you don't shoot."
Also with an editorial pedigree is Nadav Kurtz who continues as an accomplished editor at Cutters. He made his directorial debut with Paraiso, which recently made the Oscar Short Subject Documentary shortlist. Paraiso tells the story of Chicago high-rise window washers, many of whom are immigrants, most coming from a small town in Mexico. "The film," related Kurtz, "explores why they have chosen this occupation, what their spiritual beliefs are given that they face their own mortality on a daily basis, and what they see inside those buildings, which lends itself to several funny stories."
Paraiso was co-produced by Kurtz's The Strangebird Company and Dictionary Films, which is part of the Cutters' family of shops. Kurtz noted that he would have never been able to bring the short film to fruition without the production resources of Dictionary and post support from Cutters.
Kurtz continues to edit spots via Cutters, adding to credits that include collaborations with such directors as Tony Kaye (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), Vincent Haycock (Absolut), Sean Thonson (Central Dupage Hospital) and Jordan Brady (Chicago Crystal Meth Task Force). Kurtz is now also on the lookout for select shorts and other artistic projects he can direct.
Animated Shorts
Two of the directors with films on the Oscar shortlist for Best Animated Short were both included in the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase, albeit some nine years apart. Mono-monikered director PES was in the Saatchi Showcase in 2002, went on to become acknowledged as a leading stop motion animation filmmaker–helping in part to inspire Showtime's SHORT Stories series—and has now earned his first career slot on the Academy Awards shortlist with Fresh Guacamole. PES, who had a long tenure at Anonymous Content for commercials and branded content, earlier this year joined the roster of Reset for representation to the ad/branding community. Reset was founded by two of PES' former Anonymous colleagues, veteran exec Dave Morrison and director David Fincher.
Meanwhile director Mikey Please, whose spotmaking homes are affiliated shops Hornet in the U.S. and Blinkink in the U.K., was named to last year's Saatchi Showcase on the strength of his animated short titled The Eagleman Stag, which earlier this month made the Oscar shortlist.
Of Fresh Guacamole being named as one of just 10 animated shorts on the Oscar shortlist, PES said, "It's a fantastic honor, particularly for a short film without a character, without a story really."
Still the film carries a charm all its own as a pair of hands deftly manipulates an antique butcher knife to prepare guacamole from a most unconventional recipe. For example, a grenade is sliced open to yield the essential ingredient, avocado. A red pin cushion is a tomato to which an old press-like tool–a product of PES' imagination–is applied, yielding small dice which are mixed in along with varied other ingredients to create a lovingly hand-made guacamole.
Fresh Guacamole is the first "sequel" in PES' extensive filmography, the original installment coming with Western Spaghetti–with the pasta being multi-colored pick-up sticks that are boiled to a tender consistency. Among the other ingredients is a dollar bill picked off a plant and neatly sliced to double as basil. Like Western Spaghetti, Fresh Guacamole deploys painstaking stop motion animation as well as a subset of that discipline, pixilation, which applies puppet animation to human bodies, in this case specifically the chef's hands.
"My mother is an Italian cook. I grew up with cooking," said PES. "In 2008 I made Western Spaghetti which turned out to be successful online [named a top viral video of the year by Time magazine, garnering honorable mention at Sundance and an Audience Award at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2009]. For the first time I found myself thinking that I wanted to do a second iteration of a cooking film. I've had ideas for sequels to films but never done them before. I always chose to move onto a totally new film. But I like the way the cooking film template matched up with my substituting objects for different ingredients. This coupled with another idea I couldn't shake ultimately resulted in Fresh Guacamole."
That other idea was triggered by the sight of avocados in a supermarket. "Every time I saw one of those piles, I would always think grenades and envision myself grabbing one and throwing it across the store. It would have created mayhem in the produce aisle. When thinking of a grenade as an avocado, you start asking what dish can be made primarily with avocado, which of course led to guacamole so I began exploring different recipes and those that lent themselves to certain other objects as ingredients."
Fresh Guacamole played on SHORT Stories, a series that Trevor Noren, creative director of digital content at Showtime, said was inspired by the short filmmaking talents of PES as well as Don Hertzfeldt. For the first year of SHORT Stories in 2010, PES created and directed The Deep, an imaginary and imaginative nature documentary. His return engagement to the Showtime series was this year's Fresh Guacamole. PES is in talks to create something even bigger and more ambitious for the upcoming season. To qualify for Oscar consideration, Fresh Guacamole was shown in a paid movie theater in Los Angeles. The North Hollywood branch of the Laemmle Theaters chain ran the short prior to showings of The Artist back in March.
PES' short films over the years, including Fresh Guacamole, have generated significant audiences online. Via Reset, he hopes to have his short-form fare generate interest from brands and their agencies for sponsorship and related opportunities.
On the long-form front, PES is in development on a feature film based on the Garbage Pail Kids franchise from the 1980s. Financing and producing the project's development is The Tornante Company, the firm headed by former Disney CEO Michael Eisner. PES is additionally developing a second feature, Lost & Found, based on his own concept, in partnership with KatzSmith Productions, the company headed by David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith (writer of Tim Burton's Dark Shadows as well as such properties as Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and the mash-up novel "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," which hit #3 on the New York Times Bestseller list in 2009).
As for fellow animated short Oscar shortlister Please, he is gratified over the Academy recognition for The Eagleman Stag. "It's a very big deal for me and those that worked on the film. It's still a little strange. This was my Master's thesis film, so in a way it's like being rewarded for doing my homework really well. Of course, it's more than that and I don't want to downplay its context too much. A lot of the best short films I see are born from animation schools. Perhaps, there's a greater freedom there; you don't have to convince anyone aside from your tutors that your project is a good one. And even if your tutors don't believe you, you can just go ahead and do it anyway, as was the case with Eagleman."
The Eagleman Stag is a darkly comic stop motion film centered on Peter whose obsession with the fast pace of time seems to escalate all the more as he ages. As we see most of this man's life pass before our eyes, he does everything in his power to slow the passage of time. The Eagleman Stag won the Best Short Animation honor from the BAFTA competition last year.
"The concept of time being relevant to age has been something that's interested and bothered me for as long as I can remember and is partly what led me to make this film," explained Please. "Many of the early scenes are direct memories–such as being four years old and getting angry at having to wait a quarter of my life until my next birthday. I have a very vivid memory of comparing a day to an acorn and a week to an apple, then later downsizing the apple to a plum…Peter's job as a taxonomist [a classifier of bio-diversity] is more a reference to the way in which he himself perceives time. He looks at the glorious expanse of the animal kingdom and puts it into neatly labeled boxes just as he looks at his experience of time and treats it with the same unwavering logic–an exponential increase of pace with age. That said, there is certainly a strong similarity in his mildly reticular nature to that of an animator, and perhaps myself. Maybe therein lay the attraction."
Please is currently working with Blinkink and Hornet on Marilyn Miller, a short which should come out soon.
For The Road To Oscar, Part V, click here.
For The Road To Oscar, Part IV, click here.
For The Road To Oscar, Part II, click here.
For The Road To Oscar, Part I, click here.
And for Oscar season related profiles of directors and DPs, click on David O. Russell, Ang Lee, Juan Antonio Bayona, John Toll, ASC, and Ben Richardson.
