By Robert Goldrich

Collaborative bonds fashioned and then fortified over time figure prominently in this installment of Talent Show, a prequel to SHOOT’s annual The Road To Oscar series.

We start with a cinematographer whose working relationship with director David Fincher started with insert shots for a Madonna music video in the late 1980s and has since gone on to span commercials and features, the latter along the way translating into a couple of Best Cinematography Oscar nominations as well as two ASC Award noms.

Then we connect with two editors whose collaborations date back more than a decade–and who both have enjoyed a close-knit working rapport with director Alejandro González Iñárritu. Both editors have netted a Best Editing Oscar nomination on the basis of their collaborative ties with the lauded filmmaker.
Here are insights from cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, ASC, on the lensing of Fincher’s Gone Girl, and editors Stephen Mirrione, ACE, and Douglas Crise on cutting Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).

Jeff Cronenweth, ASC
For two consecutive years, Jeff Cronenweth, ASC, earned ASC Award and Best Cinematography Oscar nominations on the strength of Fincher-directed films; in 2011, it was for The Social Network, followed by The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in 2012.

Now there’s awards talk of the same magnitude for Cronenweth’s lensing of the mystery thriller Gone Girl. Based on the best-selling novel by Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl stars Ben Affleck as a man (Nick Dunne) whose wife (Amy Dunne portrayed by Rosamund Pike) goes missing

While the best seller pedigree is certainly notable, Cronenweth at the same time observed, “If David Fincher calls you about a project, you don’t need to read the script to know whether or not you want to do it. You know immediately it will be a worthwhile project artistically and creatively, and that you need to be on board.”

Fincher has brought Cronenweth on board during key, pivotal times in the DP’s career, dating back to when he was a camera assistant on Madonna’s “Oh Father” music video. “My dad [the legendary Jordan Cronenweth, ASC] was shooting the video and David gave me the chance to shoot some insert work,” recalled Jeff Cronenweth. “There I was trying to match my dad’s work–it felt odd but a great opportunity that David afforded me. Somehow, probably just through pure plain genetics, I was able to match the footage shot by my father for that music video.”

Jeff Cronenweth went on to shoot select commercials for Fincher as well as second unit for the director’s The Game and Se7en. Later Fincher gave Cronenweth the script for Fight Club. I remember when he called me in, I thought it was for second unit. Instead David gave me the chance to serve as cinematographer on Fight Club. It was a tremendously gratifying experience.”

A dozen years later Cronenweth again lensed a feature for Fincher, The Social Network. For that film, Cronenweth shot with a then state-of-the-art RED camera, which filmmaker Steven Soderbergh provided for Fincher. Cronenweth had used RED in the past but found this new iteration with the Mysterium-X chip to be advantageous. The Social Network was the first major movie to use the new chip, which offered increased dynamic range in latitude and color, the ability to hold highlights better than its predecessor, and the capability to deal with warm light.

Cronenweth and Fincher continued to push the camera envelope the next year with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Cronenweth started out lensing 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. Some 75 percent of the movie was shot on the RED ONE, with the balance on EPIC. Migrating from one camera to the other was a challenging, successful experience, continuing Fincher’s affinity for experimentation and being proactive in digital cinematography. (This was also demonstrated in Fincher’s choice of Viper for Zodiac (with Harris Savides, ASC, as cinematographer) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (shot by Claudio Miranda, ASC).

For Gone Girl, Fincher and Cronenweth went with the RED DRAGON. According to Cronenweth, Gone Girl is the first full theatrical movie to deploy the DRAGON. “Amazingly we had little or no issues whatsoever,” assessed Cronenweth. We shot for 116 or so days. It’s a 6K camera although there’s really no public forum to present 6K as of yet. Where it becomes advantageous for us is we can shoot 6K and frame for 5K, giving us a big buffer. We can go back and stabilize shots and make repositions if necessary in composition. And then we down res to a 4K release.”

In terms of what he tried to deliver, Cronenweth cited “efficiency, being ahead of the game enough to give David the right amount of time he needs to finesse performances which he has become so fantastically brilliant at. This is a movie that’s a mental chess game between a married couple, and their two nonlinear journeys that come full circle and collide. It was interesting to create a visual way alongside David that allowed them to both own their identities but also present their mental anguish and life choices along the way.”

Cronenweth observed that Affleck as Nick and Pike as Amy “have different perspectives on their world and each other. Visually it was challenging. When Nick’s character finds Amy missing and becomes for all intents and purposes a suspect, he closes off the world. A good part of his portion of the journey takes place in his house where the shades are all drawn. He buries himself in this cave. Visually we want the audience to feel that entrapment, the vulnerability, the need to hide, which entails some dramatic lighting situations.”

Asked how his working relationship with Fincher has changed or evolved over the years, Cronenweth related, “Truly, not much has changed other than the ability to sleep a little more comfortably. I think we have become more decisive and efficient, but that could be as much about the years we have collaborated together and experience as it could be from the transformation to digital capture–or more likely a combination of both.”

Their working relationship also continues in another discipline as Cronenweth recently shot a package of Gap spots directed by Fincher via production house Reset for Wieden+Kennedy, New York. Shot in black and white with a film noir feel, the campaign includes “Kiss” which earned recognition as a SHOOTonline Top Spot of the Week (8/28).

Cronenweth also continues to direct commercials as part of a helming duo, The Cronenweths, with brother Tim Cronenweth via Los Angeles production house Untitled Inc.

Stephen Mirrione, ACE; Douglas Crise
Editors Stephen Mirrione, ACE, and Douglas Crise have a strong creative bond with each other–as well as with director Alejandro González Iñárritu. Mirrione and Crise each earned an Oscar nomination for Best Achievement in Film Editing on the basis of the Iñárritu-directed Babel in 2007. Babel additionally earned a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Editing as well as an ACE Eddie Award win.

Mirrione’s filmography additionally includes cutting Iñárritu’s Biutiful, a 2010 release. And back in 2004, Mirrione garnered a Best Editing BAFTA Award nomination for his first collaboration with Iñárritu–21 Grams, a film on which Crise was an assistant editor.

Mirrione and Crise go back even further with each other. Prior to 21 Grams, Crise assisted Mirrione on director Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, for which Mirrione won the Best Editing Oscar in 2001. Soderbergh played a part in bringing Mirrione and Crise together with Iñárritu. “I was working on Ocean’s 11 with Steven and he and I were looking at dailies,” recalled Mirrione. “Before one dailies session, Steven said we should go see Amores Perros so we could see the work of a great filmmaker. I loved it. The movie made me feel in a very visceral way and I knew that Alejandro was a filmmaker I wanted to work with.”

Later, Mirrione learned that Benecio del Toro, who starred in Traffic, was part of the cast for 21 Grams. This led to Mirrione getting to put his hat in the ring for consideration as editor for the Iñárritu film. He eventually landed the gig, with Crise coming aboard as assistant editor. Down the road with Babel, Crise moved up to full-fledged editor.

And Mirrione and Crise most recently came together to edit Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), a black comedy which has already registered on the Oscar handicapping radar, starring Michael Keaton as an actor who’s famous for portraying an iconic superhero (Birdman). He tries to shake that comic book type casting as he struggles to mount an esoteric Broadway play. In the days leading up to opening night, he battles his ego and other inner demons while attempting to recover his family, his career and himself.

The movie plays out as if it is one continuous scene with one scenario moving right into the next. It’s an ongoing flow that had to be captured through extensive planning. “The biggest challenge,” observed Mirrione, “is being able to remove your editorial ego so to speak in that normally you sit back and wait for everything to come in and know you will get your chance then to fix any issues or problems. You have a lot of freedom and tricks up your sleeve to go anywhere and do anything. The director knows this too and leans on you at that point. But with this movie, everything was completely reversed. Editorial decisions are made even as early as rehearsal. Doug and I were involved even before they started shooting, trying to help during table reads and rehearsals. We had to change the rhythm of how we interacted with Alejandro.”

Crise noted, “Alejandro was so intent the whole shoot on getting everything perfect. He said he felt much more exhausted on this movie than others because he absolutely had to make sure he was getting what was needed. Fixing it later in post didn’t apply to this movie. We had some assemblies while we were still shooting. We were looking at different takes and trying different things all the time. I felt like I was on a toboggan ride.”

Mirrione related that by having this continuous flow, you as a viewer experience the story in a way that is much more immersive. You feel an intimacy with the performance. The director takes massive risks doing it this way. We might fail. But at the same time it infuses everyone with an energy that playing it safe doesn’t provide.”

A key dynamic for the editors was the musical score provided by composer/drummer Antonio Sanchez. Varied drumbeats underscore Birdman; Sanchez himself is a jazz drummer who’s a protege of jazz guitarist and composer Pat Metheny. Iñárritu met Sanchez at a Pat Metheny concert in Mexico. Arguably Sanchez’s drumbeats are the musical counterpoint to Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki’s camerawork. And the editors were heavily involved in synchronizing the music to the visuals. “Alejandro knew that without one of the rhythmic tools we would normally have in terms of visual cuts, a heavily rhythmic drum track would help us. We would have to lean on that much more so than normal. That became one of the elements we leaned on to do the editing with.”

Crise recalled spending a day early on with Sanchez who played 20 or so tracks. “There were varied drumbeats and it was a little challenging to figure out how that track would land and where it would go. I was worried that the drumbeats would take away from the dialogue. We narrowed things down to what we wanted and the rhythm helped us with the flow of the scenes.”

As for life after Birdman, Crise cut Dark Places directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, based on another novel by Good Girl’s Flynn, and starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Charlize Theron and Christina Hendricks.
Meanwhile at press time Mirrione was set to embark on The Revenant for director Iñárritu with a cast headlined by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Mirrione’s awards circuit honors include three additional ACE Eddie nominations–for Traffic in 2001, Good Night and Good Luck (directed by George Clooney) in 2006, and August: Osage County (directed by John Wells) this year. Mirrione also has three other BAFTA Best Editing noms–for Traffic, 21 Grams and Good Night and Good Luck.

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