It’s already been an eventful awards season for Gina Prince-Bythewood. On the strength of her epic feature The Woman King (Sony’s TriStar Pictures), she earned a Critics Choice Award nomination for Best Director. This came after Prince-Bythewood won the Agnes Varda Award for Directing from the Middleburg Film Festival, and the Women in Film Crystal Award for Advocacy. Additionally, the AFI named The Woman King one of the 10 best films of 2022.
The accolades for Prince-Bythewood, though, go beyond The Woman King. Back in November, she received the Filmmaker Tribute at the Gotham Awards for a career of insightful, relevant storytelling.
Jeffrey Sharp, executive director of The Gotham Film & Media Institute, stated, “Gina Prince-Bythewood is a visionary filmmaker and a champion of Black narratives, particularly stories that center around Black women. She has brilliantly tackled painful moments in our nation’s history, thorny philosophical debates, and love stories. From the beloved and burnished classic Love & Basketball to the pinnacle success of this year’s The Woman King, Gina is a true inspiration.”
Prince-Bythewood’s body of work has also landed her the American Cinema Editors (ACE) Golden Eagle Filmmaker of the Year Award, recognizing an artist who exemplifies distinguished achievement in the art and business of film. The ACE honor will be presented at the 73rd annual ACE Eddie Awards on March 5.
“A supremely versatile trailblazer from day one of her career, Gina Prince-Bythewood has consistently entertained us with intimate films and global blockbusters that explore the human experience through formidable female characters,” said ACE president Kevin Tent, ACE. “A champion of diverse, character-driven narratives, her latest film--The Woman King--is the crown jewel of a career spent pushing boundaries and telling stories that touch our hearts and minds.”
For Prince-Bythewood, these varied honors “feel like a celebration” of the work that went into bringing The Woman King to fruition--”not just my work but everybody who came together to realize this vision. Producers Viola Davis, Julius Tennon and Cathy Schulman took seven years to get it to a studio which finally said ‘yes.’”
Prince-Bythewood said it was gratifying “to now be on this [awards] side of it after that long struggle.”
That gratification, she continued, extends to other fronts such as audiences embracing the characters in The Woman King, and women, particularly Black women, getting the chance to lead the way on an epic action film--something Hollywood has been reluctant and reticent about.
Inspired by true events, The Woman King is the remarkable story of the Agojie, the all-female unit of warriors who in the 1800s protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey from invading slave traders. Inspired by true events, The Woman King follows the journey navigated by General Nanisca (Oscar winner Viola Davis) as she trains the next generation of recruits and readies them for battle against an enemy determined to destroy their way of life. The film stars Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, Hero Fiennes Tiffin and John Boyega.
Prince-Bythewood had to deal with varied challenges to bring The Woman King to pass, a prime one being having to deftly navigate through a 63-day shooting schedule to deliver a project of massive size, scope and logistics. But far and away the scariest challenge was coping with the coronavirus Omicron variant. Prince-Bythewood recalled getting through the first three weeks of shooting unscathed. Then one case of Omnicron popped up on a Saturday. By Monday, that jumped to six. Then on Tuesday there were 21. The decision was made to go on hiatus. Prince-Bythewood felt great trepidation over the uncertainty. Would the Omnicron cases rise or plateau? Would the studio opt to cut their losses after three weeks of shooting. Prince-Bythewood said that she and Davis stayed on location while everyone else left. “There was something psychological about me staying,” she observed. “I felt that if I left, I was never coming back.”
Ultimately, continued Prince-Bythewood, she felt blessed that the COVID outbreak plateaued relatively quickly, the authorities in Africa handled the situation adroitly, the actors were eager to get back and finish what they had started, and the studio committed by investing more money to help everyone come back as safely as humanly possible. Still, Prince-Bythewood, cast and crew had to continually adapt. Background actors were cut in half. An epic battle which had a thousand background performers scheduled now had to make due with a couple of hundred. Prince-Bythewood and her compatriots, including cinematographer Polly Morgan, ASC, BSC had to be creative and resourceful.
The Woman King marked the first time Prince-Bythewood had worked with Morgan. The director recalled that she was drawn to the DP from their very first meeting. “The lookbook she created was so in sync with what was in my head,” noted Prince-Bythewood. “We clicked in our collective passion to tell this story.”
Prince-Bythewood added that Morgan deeply understood how often women are “locked out of the big sandbox” when it comes to epic spectacle films. The director and DP each had a commitment in terms of will, work ethic and spirit to pull everyone through so that justice would be done to the story, and the vision behind it fully realized.
Morgan immersed herself in the task at hand. In turn Prince-Bythewood prepped the DP on myriad details, including having her present at every single meeting with fight and stunt coordinator Daniel Hernandez. “I saw her [Morgan] growing exponentially by the moment--and by the time we were ready to shoot, we had a true collaboration.” The DP’s contributions were integral to the film.
Collaborative bonds also spawned revelations, including one for Prince-Bythewood that was contrary to what she had clung to over the years. Growing up as an athlete, Prince-Bythewood felt it imperative not to show any vulnerability. This was reinforced further as a Black female director. “In my mind, vulnerability was weakness,” she recalled. But as she came together and worked in close-knit fashion with producer/actor Davis and actors such as Lashana Lynch, “women who are in touch with that side of themselves,” Prince-Bythewood saw the value of vulnerability and revealing one’s humanity. Prince-Bythewood related that this “allowed” her colleagues to “trust me as a director.” To hear and experience that trust was “a stunning thing.”
At the same time, her experience on The Woman King reinforced and advanced a dynamic Prince-Bythewood always had--self confidence, and the conviction to trust her gut. Protecting her vision for the story, taking on assorted obstacles so that she could “believe in everything that went up there [on the big screen]” further instilled in her a quiet strength that nobody or nothing could undermine her vision for and belief in the story she wanted to tell.
Prince-Bythewood’s filmography include such features as Love & Basketball, The Secret Life of Bees, Beyond The Lights, and The Old Guard. For television Prince-Bythewood directed the pilot and served as an executive producer of ABC’s limited series Women of the Movement. The six-episode series debuted in January 2022, and was based on the true story of Mamie Till- Mobley, who devoted her life to seeking justice for her son Emmett Till following his brutal murder in the Jim Crow South in 1955. Prince-Bythewood’s next television project is Genius: MLK/X, for which she and her husband Reggie Rock Bythewood will serve as executive producers under their production company banner, Undisputed Cinema. Genius: MLK/X will explore the formative years, pioneering accomplishments, dueling philosophies and key personal relationships of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
Stage to screen
The learning curve from stage to silver screen can be steep for even an accomplished playwright. When embarking on his first screenplay--an adaptation of his own play, “The Whale”--Samuel D. Hunter began to teach himself, studying cinematic form and language, sparked by filmmaker Darren Aronofsky who saw an off-Broadway production of “The Whale” and became enamored with--and excited over--the prospect of this story as a feature film.
A lover of learning, Hunter savored the challenge. But perhaps the greatest lesson learned came from Brendan Fraser who portrays Charlie, the protagonist in The Whale (A24). Charlie is a reclusive, morbidly obese English teacher who seeks to reconnect with his estranged teen daughter (portrayed by Sadie Sink). Figuring into the relationship is Herman Melville’s classic “Moby Dick” with Charlie a sort of Captain Ahab in his own right, caught up in the pursuit of something all consuming yet elusive.
From auditioning to the final tour de force performance as Charlie, Fraser imparted a revelatory lesson to Hunter who recalled Aronofsky renting a theater in the East Village before the pandemic hit full force. There, auditions were staged. And Hunter recollected his fervent hope that they could at least “see something” in the form of a sign that an actor “could get there,” that he had the potential to realize Charlie as a human character.
Exceeding that hope in his audition was Fraser. “With Brendan, he was already there,” said Hunter. “It was in the room. The character was so fully and concretely realized in such a nuanced, layered way.”
From there, Fraser continued to add to Charlie. And during a three-week rehearsal run Hunter came to appreciate Fraser as being “a very humble man, masking a deep intelligence and level of craft that is pretty remarkable.”
Hunter learned much from Fraser--but that too was remarkable in that the writer was already well versed in the magic of acting. “In theater you coach a group of people to hold a performance in their bones every night--that’s almost an athletic feat,” observed Hunter. “So much goes into sculpting it. You press ‘go’ and it happens in front of you. It’s so invigorating and intoxicating.”
Hunter continued, “Brendan taught me so much about what a really good film actor can do with a role.” So much so that it sparked Hunter to shape, write and further hone the story as it unfolded during rehearsal and in front of the camera. “There were moments on set that I would see him [Fraser] do something and I would feel, ‘look what he’s doing. Can I give him text to support him with this, some on-the-fly changes? Maybe that will underscore it a little bit more.’ Sometimes it would need that. Sometimes it wouldn’t. It was such an incredible thing to witness.”
In film, noted Hunter, multiple takes, the ability to shoot something over and over again, accentuate “what an actor can do with one glance, a twitch of his chin. The tiniest things can tell volumes. Brendan is one of those actors who can tell a story with his eyes in an incredibly layered way. It is inspiring to me as a writer knowing you can trust actors so much by NOT giving them text. So much of being a writer is giving an actor a situation where they can tell the stories themselves.”
Hunter has proven himself to be adept at creating such situations. He received a 2014 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship for his work as a playwright. Besides “The Whale” (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League nomination for Best Play, and Outer Critics Circle nomination for Best Play), his plays include “A Case for the Existence of God” (New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play), “A Bright New Boise” (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), “Greater Clements” (Drama Desk nomination for Best Play, Outer Critics Circle Honoree), “Lewiston/Clarkston” (Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), “The Few,” “A Great Wilderness,” “Rest,” “Pocatello,” “The Healing” and “The Harvest.”
Hunter’s work on director Aronofsky’s The Whale wasn’t, however, a direct leap from stage to screen. In-between Hunter served as writer and producer on all four seasons of the TV series Baskets (FX Networks). Hunter said that experience helped him settle a bit more comfortably into the feature filmmaking space.
As a playwright, he grew accustomed to delivering a script in its final form for theater, doing readings, getting notes and feedback from his husband. But ultimately, “the buck stops with me,” said Hunter. By contrast, Baskets opened up not only a new world but also Hunter himself. “I was not used to collaborating with other writers. It kicked me off balance in a good way.” In a writers’ room with the showrunner and other writing talent, Hunter found himself in new territory. “I never really had to speak my ideas before. It was really good for me in that way--learning to write with other people, to ideate, be open, to be less rigid.”
Hunter felt it was an invaluable experience to write in “such a different medium with such different people, working on a comedy so far away from something I had ever done.”
Additionally there was the dynamic of “being on set,” which “expanded my knowledge base. My world got a lot larger working on Baskets.”
This different brand of collaboration made taking on a feature a bit less daunting. And further easing the creative transition was being able to work with Aronofsky. Hunter described it as “an easy collaboration. Our work is very different. We do very different things. We brought different skill sets to the table.”
The coming together of these skill sets was, related Hunter, akin to a Venn diagram. “The Whale is where our Venn diagrams met. Working together was really great actually, responding to his notes. He welcomed my input.” Hunter and Aronofsky dovetailed naturally, a meeting of minds and creative spirits that somehow made cinematic a story with a static protagonist, confined to his home where he engages other characters, ultimately yielding for the audience an emotionally moving and life-affirming experience.
Eloquence from Elegance
Paradoxically, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” speaks volumes when put into deeply personal context by writer/director Elegance Bratton in The Inspection (A24), recently named one of the year’s 10 Best Independent Films by the National Board of Review.
Bratton enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and went into boot camp in the midst of what was the American military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” era whereby applicants to the armed services could not to be asked about their sexual orientation. In essence, non-heterosexuals could remain in the military if they did not openly declare their sexual preferences. While the policy on one hand opened up the military to many who had been denied access, such service members could not be openly queer without threat of being discharged. And thousands of brave service members were discharged simply for who they were and whom they loved.
The Inspection centers on Ellis French, portrayed by Jeremy Pope, who reflects what many Black gay military recruits experienced during the time that the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was in force. Blatant homophobia--as well as xenophobic and Islamaphobic--behavior is depicted. But in the face of deep-seated prejudice, there is a silver lining to be found that takes the form of unexpected camaraderie, esprit de corps, strength and support. For French this is an essential life-saving experience, giving a sense of belonging and purpose to an existence that had been marked by alienation and isolation, including being ostracized by his own mother for being gay.
This in many respects parallels Bratton’s own journey--kicked out of home by his mother for his sexual orientation and having to survive on the streets, coping with homelessness for some 10 years before joining the Marines. But French goes beyond his connection to Bratton; the character reflects so many of those whose voices haven’t been fully heard, showcasing the precarious ground that queer service members stand on as they try to create a path for themselves--striving to serve their lives and their country.
Bratton and French found that path--in real life and fiction, respectively, as both worlds have blended in the writer-director’s impactful brand of filmmaking. Bratton related that he came to the Marines at a point when he thought his life was “worthless.” But he recalled a drill instructor telling him that he had value in that he was given a precious trust “to protect the officers to my left and my right. It’s the concept that I was important in how I could help others,” observed Bratton.
In The Inspection, Bratton aspires to put that concept out to a world that has become increasingly polarized. “You have to learn to love yourself again. All positive progressive change starts with the individual.
Bratton’s partner, Chester Algernal Gordon, played a major role in motivating the filmmaker to see the story of The Inspection through to fruition. Bratton had written the first draft of the script while a grad student at NYU Tisch Film School. At the time, Bratton had sold a series to Viceland which gave him the financial sustenance to take the time to write a passion project. He penned three feature-length fictional scripts, ultimately picking one to pour himself into--The Inspection. Gordon, a producer on the film, inspired Bratton throughout the process, perhaps most profoundly with the notion that Bratton had a sacred duty to “bring the audience to a place that they couldn’t go without him.”
This helped lead Bratton to the realization and belief that this story--in many respects similar to his own--would be something people would want to hear and come to value.
While The Inspection marks his feature-length fiction film debut, Bratton came into the project with proven value as a storyteller. He is creator and executive producer of the alluded to Viceland TV show, My House, a 10-episode series nominated for Outstanding Documentary at the 2019 GLAAD Meduia Awards, His nonfiction feature debut, Pier Kids, made its TV and streaming premiere last year on PBS/POV. In 2021 Bratton won the Film Independent Truer Than Fiction Spirit Award which is given to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has not yet received recognition commensurate with his/her/their talent.
Such recognition, though, has been generated for The Inspection which made its world premiere as the opening night film of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Discovery Section and later closed the 2022 New York Film Festival.
Serving Bratton in good stead has been a self-described “cinematic dyslexia” which blurs the line between documentary and fiction. The Inspection has an authenticity when it comes to conveying the emotions, desires and fears of its characters, particularly French. Bratton blended this authentic bent with creative license. He sees his dyslexia as embracing “two divergent paths to the same result which is ultimately a movie.” Documentary and narrative mesh, coming together in the case of The Inspection to “influence and inspire through my process of healing and triumphing over traumas. I’ve been through these experiences and am sharing them so they can be of value to others.”
Bratton said he was blessed by a gifted cast and crew--the former including Pope as French and Gabrielle Union as French’s mother, Inez. Pope is a Black man who’s come out in real life. Bratton said Pope was completely invested in the story. “I wanted him before I had a first draft,” recalled Bratton, citing Pope’s acting acumen, commitment and ability to be tough and vulnerable at the same time.
As for Union, Bratton related that his own mom had died just a few days after The Inspection was greenlit. A major reason behind Bratton telling the story in The Inspection was it serving as “a steppingstone toward repairing” the relationship with his mother. Union was cast right around the time Bratton’s mom had passed. “Gabby was my mother’s favorite actress,” said Bratton, noting that Union had exhibited in past performances the ability to portray “a tough, beautiful woman, a demonstrative human being with raw bone beauty and fierce intelligence.” These characteristics were all part of Bratton’s mom and he felt grateful that Union agreed to in a sense “bring her back to life.”
Emperor of light
Roger Deakins, CBE, ASC, BSC, twice a Best Cinematography Oscar winner and a 15-time nominee, is widely acknowledged as an emperor of light, a billing reinforced by Empire of Light (Searchlight Pictures), his latest collaboration with director Sam Mendes. Empire of Light marks Deakins’ fifth film for Mendes, the others being Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, Skyfall and 1917.
The latter earned Deakins his second Academy Award. His first win came two years earlier, in 2018, for Blade Runner 2049. Both 1917 and Blade Runner 2049 also earned ASC Awards, of which Deakins has a total of five--the others being for The Shawshank Redemption, The Man Who Wasn’t There and Skyfall. Deakins has a career tally thus far of 16 ASC Award nominations.
Empire of Light--which is set in and around a fraying but still beautiful cinema house on the south coast of England in the 1980s--centers on an unlikely bond between a white woman named Hilary (Olivia Colman) and a young Black man, Stephen (Micheal Ward), who work at the Empire theater. It’s a liaison which in a sense helps them both heal together as Hilary grapples with mental illness and Stephen is impacted repeatedly by rampant racism in the U.K. during that era.
The film is at its core a character study, “much more in the world of the films I imagined working on when I started out I suppose,” related Deakins who is no stranger to doing justice to characters but as of late it’s been within the context of epic fare such as 1917 and Blade Runner 2049.
Still, the setting for Empire of Light--perhaps more accurately, finding the setting--had its challenges. Deakins noted that Mendes originally had in mind a theater in Brighton that he came to know years ago. But upon visiting there, they discovered that the interior had been turned into a casino. “Nothing would have worked. The Brighton seafront would have been a nightmare to control,” assessed Deakins as the town on the U.K.’s south coast was overdeveloped and not at all reminiscent of what the writer-director remembered in his youth.
A suggestion was made to go to the east coast, where the city of Margate proved much more in line with the movie’s era and story. A fortuitous discovery there was a fairground with a cinema house that hadn’t been used for quite some time. While its glory days had passed, the art deco theater built in the 1930s fit much of the bill for the Empire movie house. Production designer Mark Tildesley had to rebuild the front facing, including fashioning an Empire sign which lent a slight Americana feel. The interior was difficult to work in due to asbestos and varied restrictions of what they could do--but that sense of a disused structure dovetailed well with a section of the Empire that was closed off, a hidden venue where Hilary and Stephen could spend some alone time, even along the way repairing the wing of a pigeon, one of many birds making that abandoned area their roost.
The old cinema house on the fairground also had an old auditorium which production designer Tildesley had gutted, rebuilding its stage, all the walls and revamping the floor. The vintage real-world site thus after this work was done gave Mendes a great deal of what he needed in one location.
Furthermore, just several doors down was an amusement arcade which had gone up in smoke. A set for the theater lobby was built there by Tildesley and his team--providing the gateway to the cinema house that wasn’t present at the nearby location.
Deakins noted that the proximity of the lobby set to the theater meant that they shared virtually the same view when looking out the doors. The welcoming interior environ--replete with a grand staircase, a foyer, offices and cinema space--gave the venue a feeling of what Mendes experienced as a youngster, coming out of the cold during a rainy holiday into a movie house, seeing the concession stand, sweets, popcorn, the red carpet, plush curtains and then entering a dark theater where movies unspooled, sparking a sense of childhood awe. So in addition to being a character study, Empire of Light serves as a small homage to the cinema.
Deakins captured all of that and more, deploying the ARRI Alexa Mini LF, the camera he used for 1917. For Empire of Light, he paired the Alexa Mini LF--desirable for many reasons, including its light weight and maneuverability--with ARRI Signature Prime lenses which he described as fast, physically light, very clean and sharp. He also extensively used LED lights for the first time. (A few LED lights were used on Blade Runner 2049.)
Margate turned out to be a “dreamland” for Empire of Light though Mendes had to adapt his vision a bit in that it still was a bit different from Brighton, related Deakins. “It took a little time for him to get his head around Margate as the setting for his story.”
Deakins shared that he enjoyed being in Margate for Empire of Light. He grew up in Torquay, some 250 miles away, where he along with his wife and collaborator James Ellis Deakins still have a place. Margate and Torquay are similar English seaside towns. And in Southern California where the couple mainly live, they are just a few blocks from the beach. The DP has an affinity for the water, and his lensing contributed to making the seaside town for Empire of Light a character in its own right.
Creating and peeling layers
Editor Bob Ducsay, ACE has a deep working collaborative relationship with writer-director Rian Johnson which spans a little over a decade. Together they have teamed on four features, starting with Looper, then Star Wars: Episode VIII--The Last Jedi, the original Knives Out for which Ducsay earned an ACE Eddie Award nomination in 2020, and the recently released Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Netflix).
Ducsay and Johnson also have taken on television together with Poker Face. Created by Johnson, the Peacock series debuts this month. Ducsay cut a couple of episodes directed by Johnson.
Among the prime challenges posed by Glass Onion was meeting expectations from a fan base that came together for the original Knives Out. Yet as the same time, Glass Onion is not a sequel. Rather it’s a completely different mystery, the common bond being the detective character, Benoit Blanc, portrayed by Daniel Craig.
Ducsay is all too familiar with projects that come with an already established fan base, which sets a high creative bar going forward. His second collaboration with Johnson, after all, was in the Star Wars franchise.
“As a movie fan, when I see a sequel of a movie I loved, I want more of what I saw--but I don’t want to see the same movie again. While Glass Onion feels related to the first movie, it’s a whole new adventure. That’s the needle you have to thread--combining familiarity and newness,” said Ducsay.
Helping immeasurably in threading that needle is Johnson and Ducsay’s working process. “I get involved really early on. I get a draft of the screenplay when we work together. Glass Onion was no different. We talk about things that may or may not be working. Details about character, nuance, sometimes abstract parts of the process. We really go through any issues that may impact us down the road. I read multiple drafts of the screenplay in the early stages. I go on location wherever we’re making the movie.”
This extensive up-front involvement--having a handle on how a movie is coming together throughout the process, being in step with how a character and/or coverage is or isn’t working and making adjustments accordingly--has helped Johnson and Ducsay avoid having to engage in any additional photography once a movie is finished.
Ducsay described Glass Onion as “an editor’s dream,” putting him smack dab in the middle of the mystery genre and all its delights, enhanced by Johnson’s interest in unconventional structuring of stories. “I absolutely love ensemble movies, all these disparate voices, the characters than Rian created. As an editor you’re hoping to make a lovely meal in which the actors and the screenplay deliver these incredible ingredients, making sure that everyone is represented at the right level so that the movie can be its best.”
Each character, continued Ducsay, becomes “a movie friend” as an editor sits with them 12 hours a day for a year. In the case of Blanc, Ducsay was dealing with a character he had come to know and shape in a prior film. And in the second go-around you know that character infinitely more intimately. He’s not a brand new creation but rather one you try to help continue evolve. Ducsay said that making that task easier and him all the more confident was the high caliber of Craig’s performance. Like an onion, it’s a performance with many layers that the editor--and audience--can peel back and discover.
The downside is the wealth of material that a great ensemble cast delivers, meaning that invariably some wonderful work winds up on the proverbial cutting room floor. A scene might get a tremendous laugh or stir an emotion but sometimes it has to be taken out to be of service to the overall movie, observed Ducsay, adding that an editor must have “the discipline” to subtract in those instances.
Ducsay finds strength in being part of a movie family like the one Johnson has created. While he spends an enormous amount of time on the job, Ducsay said the experience has been “delightful and wonderful” in that there’s a true esprit de corps among collaborators and colleagues. “It’s easier to do good work with people whom you both admire and who are wonderful to be around. A lot of that shows up on the screen.”
As for what’s next, Ducsay continues his Netflix run with Atlas, a sci-fi thriller directed by Brad Peyton and starring Jennifer Lopez. Ducsay has a track record with Peyton, having cut such films as Rampage and San Andreas, both starring Dwayne Johnson.
Collaborative ties
Babylon (Paramount Pictures) marked the continuation of two collaborative relationships for editor Tom Cross, ACE--with writer-director Damien Chazelle, and cinematographer Linus Sandgren, FSF, ASC.
The first time Cross cut a Chazelle-directed feature, Whiplash, he wound up winning the Best Editing Oscar. The second film on which they collaborated, La La Land, yielded another Oscar nomination for Cross. They next teamed on First Man. Cross’ collaborative history with Chazelle actually dates back to the short film Whiplash (a Sundance Award winner), which spawned the feature of the same title.
Meanwhile Cross first teamed with Sandgren on director David O. Russell’s Joy. That collaboration was so fruitful that Cross was part of a chorus recommending the DP for La La Land, which ended up earning Sandgren the Best Cinematography Oscar. Cross and Sandgren again came together on First Man. And then they took on the James Bond film, No Time to Die, for director Cary Joji Fukunaga.
As for how he works with Chazelle, Cross related that the filmmaker “loves to be in the editing room. We share breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday while editing. The two of us just run scenes and look at takes, trying different things. By this point we certainly have a shorthand. There’s a lot of trust between us in the editing room. I’m never afraid to pitch a crazy idea. I don’t think he is either. We are very well matched in terms of how open we are in trying to solve story issues.”
Babylon spans the decades, resurrecting the silent film era--full of free wheeling, madcap hedonism and depravity--and then the advent of the talkies which slows down the chaotic decadence yet at the same time brings chaos to those trying to adapt to movies with sound.
Chazelle not only directed but also wrote Babylon. Cross noted that while Chazelle meticulously planned the film, the auteur was “not overly precious” in the editing room. That open-mindedness, explained Cross, is because Chazelle “believes in the editing process as a continuation of his writing process. It’s a privilege for me to work alongside him, to rewrite dialogue or change a concept. I don’t take that lightly. He is such a brilliant storyteller, everything mapped out and storyboarded. He’s very precise about what he sets out to do. But once he gets into the editing room, he’s very flexible, very collaborative.”
Similarly Cross has a strong bond with Sandgren, one that is an exception to the rule for the editor who generally feels “a little removed from the rest of the department heads and crew simply because I’m rarely on set. I’m usually too busy trying to dig myself out of a hole with a pile of dailies coming in.” But starting with Joy and then even more so on La La Land, Cross and Sandgren began developing what the editor described as “an informal, casual shorthand.” That blossomed on No Time to Die at the U.K.’s Pinewood Studios where Cross and Sandgren would talk about what was going to be shot, questions and concerns the DP had and so on. They would text back and forth, often with Cross noting as a bit of positive reinforcement how “amazing” the material was that Sandgren had shot.
Cross said that for Babylon he was “always trying to keep in mind the pace and the energy” of the film which had a script of some 180 pages. “Even though we knew it would a big, epic movie covering several decades, Chazelle wanted the silent film era in particular to have “a breakneck pace.”
Cross had to work to maintain that, adding that composer Justin Hurwitz’s score “kind of added a foundation for everything that we were cutting,” helping to inform the rhythm and pace of what was “a music-driven movie.”
At the same time, though, continued Cross, “We had to be careful not to overdo it, careful to build peaks and valleys in the storytelling, to know when we could be full throttle and when it was time to put the brakes on.” That’s why it’s exciting to work with Chazelle, observed Cross, in that the director keenly understands the need for contrast. “He wanted the beginning of the movie to be feral, chaotic, loud, fast, to kind of pull the audience in and really support the idea of the Wild West days of Hollywood. It was important we play that to the hilt so that when the story reaches a major turning point, the transition to the sound era, we could do a big stylistic reset.”
This established a new context, starting in a scene where silent film actor Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) is doing take after take to get a simple scene for her first sound picture right--but seemingly to no avail. “Damien wanted us to take our time in that scene to set up a new language, a new film grammar for the audience to understand.”
Regarding the biggest takeaway from his experience on Babylon, Cross cited a scene from the film in which gossip columnist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart) lets one-time major silent movie star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) know that his career is over and has been for some time. In the big picture, she says that he had a great ride, should appreciate that and find great solace in that 50 years down the road his movies will be discovered by a new generation, meaning long after he’s gone, he will come back to life. In that same vein, Cross said he’s grateful that he’s been given the opportunity to work on movies he believes in and feels strongly about--in collaboration with filmmakers like Chazelle. As another character in Babylon, Manny Torres (Diego Calva) affirms, moviemaking affords you the chance to “be part of something bigger than yourself.”
Radio days
Martín Hernández, a supervising sound editor and sound designer on writer-director Alejandro G Iñarritu’s Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (Netflix), is a two-time Oscar nominee for Best Achievement in Sound Editing--in 2014 for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and the following year for The Revenant; both films were helmed by Iñarritu
Iñarritu and Hernández started working together quite awhile ago, dating all the way back to a radio station in Mexico. And perhaps those radio roots amplify part of what has made the feature film collaborations of Hernández and Iñarritu so successful. After all, radio is paradoxically a very visual medium as sound and dialogue spark viewers to picture what they’re hearing. Sound can conjure up powerful memories and that is integral to Bardo which centers on Silverio Gama (portrayed by Daniel Giménez Cacho), a renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles, who, after being named the recipient of a prestigious international award, is compelled to return to his native country--a simple trip that will cause him to grapple with his memories and fears from the past, filling his present life with bewilderment, wonder, questions about his identity and mortality, what Mexico means to him, as well as the importance of family. The experience parallels in some respects that of Iñarritu, who made a deep dive into self-reflection as he wrote the screenplay with Nicolás Giacobone, his compatriot on Birdman and Biutiful. Going back home is a theme that’s particularly apropos in that Bardo marks Iñarritu’s first film shot in Mexico since Amores Perros in 2000.
Hernández observed that capturing the “purity of radio” whereby the story relies on the listener’s imagination, is a dynamic which he and Iñarritu apply to their approach to sound and the role it plays in a feature film. Like radio listeners, those who see and hear a feature film are asked to actively engage, bringing their imaginations to the fore--that’s the form of storytelling he and Iñarritu strive for, to connect with the audience on that deeper level.
Towards that end, Hernández and Iñarritu teamed with Nicolas Becker on Bardo. Becker won an Oscar and a BAFTA Award for his work as sound designer and sound supervisor for the film Sound of Metal. Hernández noted that Becker provided another separate perspective on sound, a reinterpretation of scenes, lending a depth through which sound helps in the discovery of the story behind the story.
While Iñarritu, a five-time Oscar winner, is a brilliant visualist, Hernández described him as “a very sound-driven director” who’s challenging himself and his collaborators all the time, delving into how sound can uncover memories, enrich the experience for viewers. This in turn motivates Hernández. “I love challenges. I like to work on projects that are challenging. That’s the only way I can grow and improve myself. When you are always in your comfort zone, nothing can be achieved.”
This has yielded what Hernández described as “a very mature soundtrack,” which helps Bardo as a film “connect one idea with the next one, and that idea with the next one” and so on. The ideas never end until the film finishes, said Hernández who likened it to “a small creek of water flowing and you go with the ride. You have to lose yourself and see where the flow is taking you.”
Sound plays an essential role in “taking the audience to a place,” continued Hernández. The sound in Bardo is akin to a concept album where “track one becomes track two” with a natural path from one subsequent track to the next, taking the listener for a ride. Hernández cited Pink Floyd as among the many progressive groups doing concept albums, creating a flow from one track to the next. By the way, noted Hernández, a concept album comes with images, more like a film. Bardo in turn as a film has a concept album flow from a sound perspective.
In addition to the two Oscar nominations, Hernández won a BAFTA Award for The Revenant and BAFTA nominations for Iñarritu’s Babel and Birdman, as well as the Guillermo del Toro-directed Pan’s Labyrinth.
This is the ninth installment of a 17-part series with future installments of The Road To Oscar slated to run in the weekly SHOOT>e.dition, The SHOOT Dailies and on SHOOTonline.com, with select installments also in print/PDF issues. The series will appear weekly through the Academy Awards gala ceremony. Nominations for the 95th Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, January 24, 2023. The 95th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 12, 2023.