(upbeat music)
- Let's get started.
Janusz, tell us about
your longtime relationship
with Steven Spielberg
and what makes that work.
- I have worked with Steven since 1993,
so that's a very good relationship
that evolves constantly.
Every picture that we do,
we discover new things about each other.
Not just in our personalities
but also a creative energy that
we build around the project.
After making so many movies with him
and being with him for such a long time,
I personally still discover that he's got
so much new untapped creativity
that every movie that we do, he amazes me
with his new point of view with ability
to tell the story a different way.
So, it never became routine,
and that's what's very exciting to me.
- So, for example, this film, The Post.
What did the two of
you begin to talk about
when he brought it to you?
- Steven said, "I've got
this really great story.
"It's a story about the Pentagon Papers
"And Washington Post publishing the papers
"Against the government's advice.
"And the demand of not
publishing the papers
"Is going to be with Tom
Hanks and Meryl Streep.
"And we're gonna start in two months."
And of course I was very excited about it.
I knew it's going to be period movie,
I knew I have to figure
out what is the language,
what is the approach, what is the light,
where are the lights coming from?
What is the framing, and so forth?
All that stuff that we
all have to figure out
before we make the movie.
(dramatic music)
- [Tom] If we don't hold
them accountable, who will?
- We can't hold them accountable
if we don't have a newspaper.
- Nixon would muster the
full power of the presidency,
and if there's a way to destroy
you, by God, he'll find it!
- I'm asking your advice,
Bob, not your permission.
- She can't do this, the legacy
of the company is at stake.
- What will happen if we don't publish?
(typewriter clicks)
We will lose!
The country will lose!
(loud dramatic music)
- How did working with him on this one
compare to your early
movie, like, for example,
when he came to you for Schindler's List?
- Usually, when you
look at Steven's movies,
he will have two characters
who are the principal characters.
So if you think of Lincoln,
which was a big canvas picture,
with very important words
coming out of actors,
on this movie, you've got
more than just Lincoln.
You've got five, six characters
who are not just doing one main role.
They are equally important to each other.
So it was in that aspect the
movie was very different.
I think Steven was much more
focused on not necessarily
on the imagery, but on the content.
I mean, he's always
focused on the content.
But somehow, as we all
know, he's such a director,
that his movies are told
through language of camera
and camera movements and
lighting and all that stuff.
But here, he was very much
focused on the content,
the actors' performance, more than.
Not more, it's just different
than he was with Lincoln,
because he've got many
actors of equal importance.
- Bob, you've worked with
George Clooney before.
Tell us a little bit
about what makes that relationship work.
- I'd seen his first movie,
where it's actually he'd
made two movies I think,
before I worked with him.
And his approach is really
an actor's approach, I think,
to directing.
And it's one of the things that,
I think until you've experienced it,
it is very different from someone
who is a writer/director primarily,
or always a director.
He really looks at the actors
and what's going on with the actors.
They're his closest collaborators.
And this picture that I just did with him
is very different because
he didn't act in it at all.
He wasn't in it.
He really just directed it.
And he and Grant Heslov, his partner,
rewrote a Coen Brothers script.
Which (laughs) I'm sure
Roger would have shot,
actually, had it actually gone about,
also like 15 years ago I think
was when they wrote Suburbicon.
And Grant and George added a whole level
to the script that
wasn't there originally.
It's about a small
community on the east coast.
These were houses that were built
right after World War II,
for very little money.
They were sort of middle-class housing,
and they were housing developments,
the first ones in the United States.
And this one particular one
had a black family move in.
It actually really happened.
And there was a race riot,
and a number of other things
took place that we don't
really associate or think about
with the North in the United States.
So they wanted to include that in this
Coen brothers murder script.
So they made a kind of a little
bit of a mash up with it.
(mellow music)
- Just out for a ride.
- Surprise for you when you get home.
- What did you do?
- You're gonna pay us that money.
- What did you do?
- You're gonna pay us that money.
- What did you do?
- You're gonna pay us that money!
(horn honks)
(glass shattering)
(gas tank explodes)
(glass shatters)
(breathes heavily)
(bicycle squeaking)
- He actually hired the
same storyboard artist
who does all the Coen brothers movies.
So, he storyboarded the whole film,
and it actually helped a lot.
It's the first time I've worked
with him where that happened,
where we actually went through it.
And it made it, I know we
all have different ideas
about how to work with storyboards,
but it actually made a
big difference on it.
And he actually does focus on the visuals
in a very specific way.
He had a very clear idea about what
he wanted the movie to look like,
which wasn't my experience
with him before quite so much.
So that was kind of different.
- Roger, you've worked with
Denis Villeneuve before,
but what did you think
when he first said to you,
"We're going to make Blade Runner?'
- Well, I think he was terrified,
and I think that kind of like
made me feel really more terrified.
I mean, it's one of those
sort of things though,
you can't say no to it, the opportunity.
You know what I mean?
And having worked with
Denis twice, you know,
and had a really good
relationship with him,
we have a very similar
sort of sensibility,
and we like to work in a similar way.
We consider, you know, the script,
and how each scene's gonna
be translated quite a lot.
You know, we spend a lot of time in prep,
just talking things through.
He likes to shoot with a single camera.
You know, stuff like that.
So we have a similar way of working.
Blade Runner was something
I couldn't say no to,
and why would I?
- When did the two of you
start talking about it,
and what was kind of the
process before you began?
- We started, I went to
Montreal, he was cutting Arrival.
And I was staying
Montreal for a few months
at the end of 2015, so it was like
nine months before we started shooting,
we started storyboarding it.
And, well we started really talking
about the script and how to visualize it,
and actually, some of the script
in terms of the staging and the setting
sort of changed as we discussed it.
And it was also, Dennis
Gasner was also there.
So we were discussing the
overall look of the film,
as we went through the script.
And so, I really like that process.
I think, especially in a film like that,
the prep is so important.
And then it gradually,
we started storyboarding,
getting more and more specific
about different scenes.
- So you were working closely with
the production designer
at that stage as well.
- [Roger] Yeah, all the
way, absolutely, yeah.
- The ancient models give the
entire endeavor a bad name.
What a gift, don't you think?
From Mr. Wallace to the world.
(footsteps)
The outer colonies would never
have flourished had he not bought Tyrell,
revivified the technology.
To say the least of what we do.
- [Carolyn] Hayte, You've done a few films
with Christopher Nolan already,
tell us about your collaborative process.
- You know, after you finish a film,
it's always kind of unsatisfying,
because you've started to
discover things together.
And one film is just not
enough to develop that on.
And then you do a next film,
and you get much deeper into the matter,
and you can challenge
each other much more.
It's so much about chemistry as well.
You know, in the beginning
you're very stiff,
and you're really feeling each other out,
and you're sort of
tiptoeing around each other.
But then on the next
project, you can do more,
you dare to do more,
and you can use things
that you have been
learning from each other.
And I very much enjoy
that, I very much enjoy
sort of the next picture
in that perspective.
You know, I took over
from Wally, of course,
which is always this very scary thing.
You know, it's like, after a divorce,
you know, you're the new
girlfriend, you know?
- I've been there a couple
of times, it's fun though.
- Well, Wally Fister wanted to
pursue directing, at that point, right.
- Wally wanted to pursue directing,
so Chris had to find a new
person, and he found me.
But, you know, you're scared
to death in the beginning.
You want to fulfill certain expectations.
You want to deliver what
had been delivered before.
And at the same time, you want to bring
something of yourself
to the table, you know?
(dramatic music)
(airplanes flying)
(airplane rattling)
- I'm going down.
- I'm on him, bail out.
(dramatic music)
(airplanes roaring)
(airplane zooming)
- Now the swell looks good, I'm ditching.
- Now it sounds like the two of you
also had a lot of fun together on this,
because you told me the two of you
got to go up in the Spitfires.
- Yeah, we had a tremendous
amount of fun, yes.
Like two little boys, you
know, flying in a Spitfire.
It's very much fun.
But we just wanted to figure
out how it really felt.
We wanted to know what the G-forces
do to your body, and
how the light changes.
And we just wanted to
understand what it is to sit in
a small sort of, you know,
plexiglass-encased cabin,
you know, and feel that
claustrophobia at the same time,
feel the sort of the
magnitude and space around.
We wanted to see with our own eyes,
how planes can move, you
know, the physics behind it.
How they move in
relationship to each other.
Very important, you know, for one plane
to line up with another plane
and start shooting at it.
There's a lot of physics.
We were very much interested in showing
the difficulty of that very thing.
You know, not only sort of the beauty,
and the graciousness of it,
but also very much the difficulty.
So we went out flying, just
to be able to understand.
- So Dan, you've worked with
Guillermo del Toro before.
But tell us a little bit
about how you work together,
specifically on The Shape of Water.
- When we shot Crimson
Peak for some years ago,
that was a very colorful movie.
And it talked about this love story
between this girl that's
not talking and a fish.
And I was like, what is
this about, you know.
So weird, you know, how
can that be interesting.
And he talked very much about
it should be a black and white movie.
So in the beginning, we talked about
a lot of black and white.
But I wanted to shoot in monochromatic,
like old-fashioned black and white.
And of course, nobody wants to
pull the money out for that,
because then there's no way around it.
You know, normally you're shooting color,
and you're making it
black and white in post.
And then you have those options,
but we didn't want to do that.
And of course that was a long process,
because we were shooting
a very colorful movie.
So in the beginning, like
going black and white,
I was so excited, like this, you know,
all the cinematographers in the world
want to shoot black and white,
and I was so keen about,
like, this must be fantastic.
So for a couple of months, I was so happy.
And then, we couldn't find
the money, or whatever it was.
You know, so we decided to go color again.
(dramatic music)
- Dammit.
(car engine sputtering)
(car door slams)
(car door opens)
- We have to go.
(thunder booms)
Where are you?
Where the fuck are you?
(dishes crash)
- Of course, I'm very
pleased about the movie.
And you know, we have worked together
since '96 I think it was.
And then we took a break for some years,
and we met again for Crimson Peak.
And it was like we had been
together two days before.
It was amazing, you know.
And he's so much a movie maker.
So for him,
you know his talk about camera move,
and then lighting, and we
are on the same page there.
So it was like coming back home
after like 15 years vacation.
- Rachel, what was it like
working with Dee Reese
for the first time when you made Mudbound?
- Well, Dee and I had sort of known
each other from the indie circuit.
I think we've both been
sort of mutual fans
of each other's work, and kind of knew
each other a little bit socially.
Bradford, who had shot Pariah for her,
is one of my good friends.
And, you know, for whatever reason,
I don't know if he wasn't available,
or she just thought I was a
better fit for this project,
but she approached me about it.
You know, it's a book originally.
And so, the script that she sent me
was sort of the first pass.
But from that very first script,
it was, you know, it was
really sort of my dream period.
She had me at 1940s.
And then everything else was kind of,
you know, bonus, bonus on that.
But I was a big fan of Pariah,
I was a big fan of her short.
You know, she had a short called Pariah
that sort of inspired the feature.
So, just kind of from
the first conversation,
it felt like this was a good one to do.
- [Man] What good is a deed?
My grandfathers and great-uncles,
grandmothers and great-aunt,
father and mother,
broke, tilled, hoed, planted,
plugged, raised, done.
Broke again.
Worked this land all they lives.
This land that never would be theirs.
- Now this was shot in just 29 days,
on location in Louisiana
during the summer.
You had heat, you had obviously mud.
A lot of challenges.
Tell us a little bit about the challenges
of shooting this film.
- It was brutal.
I mean it, we had initially
set out to shoot it in January.
And of course between financing
and casting and all of those things,
it sort of pushed and pushed and pushed.
And next thing you know,
we're sort of in the South,
in July, and on a plantation
with no respite from the heat.
The two interiors had no windows,
there was sort of no way
to air condition them,
even if we hypothetically could.
You know, mud was sort of,
I mean, you see the title, and you know
you're in for it a little bit.
But mud was, you know, if it wasn't rain
that we were creating, it was,
you know, in the South in the summer,
you sort of get one to
two thunderstorms a day.
So you're in the middle of a sunny scene,
and two minutes later, it's pouring.
And then you're sort of
cleaning all the gear off,
and you know, shuffling
through and trying to find
some continuity with what
you've been doing before.
And then we had to make
mud when there was no mud.
So, it was, the elements, both manmade
and certainly the real
elements were really
the biggest challenge that I found.
- Were there instances where
it would start raining,
and you'd just decide, okay,
this scene's gonna be in the rain?
- There was actually a
lot of scripted rain.
If it started raining,
we would go and grab
the scene that we're
intended to be in the rain.
The problem is that it rains there
for 20 minutes, and then it stops raining.
So there was a lot of starting something
and then having to figure out ways
to match to the thing
that you had started.
And, you know, the other
thing is just the gear.
We would often find at least
one road into this plantation,
and one road out, and we
would end up with sort of,
whether it was putty
bones, or fly swatters
that stuck in the mud, couldn't move.
There was also just the fallout
from all of the rain and the water.
The logistics were really tough.
(upbeat music)
- Dan, what were some of the challenges
you faced during production,
as The Shape of Water was shot in 60 days,
and on a 20 million production budget?
- It's a pretty small movie, money-wise.
But it looks, if you ask me, pretty big.
Of course it was challenging, you know,
to find a way to work around, you know,
because we couldn't afford all our stuff.
We had to fight for all the equipment.
So we shot with a very
small camera package.
We shot most of the time with one camera.
Pretty small movie comparing
to what we were trying to do.
And we had to fight for every
crane bay we had to get in.
You know, we had to fight for that,
because we could not afford it.
You know, so we shot a lot with
a small cheap arm and a hothead.
Because we like to have this moving
the camera as much as possible.
And Guillermo is never
shooting a master, you know.
All the shot is shot-by-shot.
So, it's of course time-consuming
to take words off and on
and all the time, you know.
And he's trying to shoot as
much as possible chronological.
So it's like going on an on and off.
And that's of course difficult,
like handling the lighting,
because you have to go back again
later in the day to the
same lighting setup.
But the biggest challenge was, you know,
we have to be very clever
about how we spent our money.
Because 95% of the movie is in the studio.
And when we was outside, we
was in the rain all the time.
That's why, you know, we were doing
artificial rain, you know, night times,
big, big night setups with a lot of rain.
And because we were
shooting in the winter time,
so we have to heat up the
rain because it was so cold.
So we had problems with
the rain deflectors,
getting foggy, and all that
stuff everybody knows about.
And the actors could not stand it.
Poor Sally was standing
with a small jacket on,
it was like pouring down with
rain for hours and hours.
So we was shooting with heated rain.
That was a challenge,
it was so fun to do it,
you know, because to work
with Guillermo is like,
he's so much a movie maker, so it's,
it's a pleasure to be a
part of that of course.
But we have to be clever.
We could not just order
stuff in all the time.
We would have to be very
precise what we need that day.
So that was pretty good.
- It's almost like he was
talking about Blade Runner.
(panel laughs)
You could say it was a different budget.
But, and you know, the
more money the budget has,
then the more expectation and
the more you push yourself,
probably, to do stuff, and you
get down to the same thing.
We had the same issues,
we were shooting outside
on the back lot for some things,
and both Denis and I said,
we're not shooting outside,
unless it's gray, overcast and raining.
(panel laughs)
THat's it.
And of course, production was like,
oh my God, what are we gonna do?
And, you know, so it's the same issues.
We shot some work on a
tank that we actually built
to shoot this night exterior,
with wave machines, this
like storm sequence.
And of course, the water had to be heated
because it was like end
of October or November
I think we were shooting it.
And it was really cold,
it was almost freezing.
But it was really kind of nice.
You get a happy accident because all
the water started steaming
about seven o'clock,
you got this fantastic steam.
So every evening, after I
figured that was happening,
I had to stall before we started shooting,
(panel laughs)
so I could get
this steam, so everything matched.
So you get the same thing, isn't it?
In a way, it doesn't
matter what the budget is,
everything's held up for what you.
- Now, in the film there
are some of the sets
where you used water to such great effect
with the reflections,
and to create movement.
Can you talk a little bit
about how you approached that?
- It started all that
time ago in Montreal,
discussing the whole kind of concept.
And then, so there's this one
character that Jared Leto plays.
And, I just wanted his interiors
to kind of always be about moving light.
As though he had this
sort of sunlit interior
in this world that's full
of fog and snow outside.
But he's created this
artificial kind of world.
So then I just started, you know,
trolling the web basically,
looking at different architects
and the way they used light.
You know, discovering things like
you have water on a ceiling,
and you put light through it,
and you get wonderful acoustics.
And so there was all that.
It was kind of, yeah, a progression.
- To go back to when you were starting
to talk about it in Montreal,
obviously this is a
sequel to a classic film,
with a very distinct look.
To what extent did the original inform
your decisions of what the
overall film would look like?
- I think, in all honesty, not much.
Obviously, it's got parallels because
it's the same world thirty years on.
But I think it's very much Denis' own
take on the script.
It's a film that could stand by itself.
And, I'm not Jordan Croneweth,
I could not light like Jordan,
so I didn't even wanted to go there.
I mean, I kinda light
in a naturalistic way,
in a much simpler way, and he's got,
his style was so much classic
and cuts, and wonderful.
I couldn't do that.
So, I didn't even really
want to go there, frankly.
- I feel terrible because
everyone's had a struggle.
(panel laughs)
- [Carolyn] Tell us.
- The mud, and it's
raining, and it's cold.
And, I just had a great time.
It was like, 80 degrees.
(panel laughs)
Indoors.
We had these wonderful sets
that were air conditioned.
It was the opposite of a struggle.
We had all this money.
- [Carolyn] But now, you were--
- We never had a, nothing.
No, I'm being serious actually,
there were very simple.
Both movies were done in LA,
I got to go home at night,
didn't have to live in some other country.
- That's a good moral of the story.
Shoot more and less at the house.
- Even though they were
both shot in Los Angeles,
they were very different looks.
You had downtown Los Angeles,
and then you had this.
- The sort of film-digital discussion
is one I sort of don't
enjoy having very much.
But I think that's really one of the,
the Denzel movie, he
wanted to shoot on film,
so did the director.
And George wanted to shoot digitally.
And they do have a distinct look.
And they're, or at least I can't
figure out how to change them.
I mean, I end up with something
out of the box on film
that I don't seem to be able to find.
And, I actually hope to talk to somebody
here to explain how to do it.
Because my digital work seems to be
a little bit homogenized, and
a little clinical looking.
And that tends to be what I sort
of fight against, a little bit.
And when I shoot film, it
sort of automatically happens.
I don't end up having to
kind of make that struggle.
It's just sort the medium.
But this is, really I
think, the real difference.
But, they're very different movies.
It was a stylized period
film in Suburbicon.
It was kind of naturalistic lighting.
And the Roman Israel, the
Denzel Washington movie,
was a little more theatrical.
And a little bit different
in terms of lighting.
So that is the difference.
But I think when I look at them,
I have no style, I have no
idea what I'm doing, usually.
It just sort of grows out of conversations
with the director and whoever
the production designer is.
I don't know.
Does anybody else?
I still have a real hard time
figuring out how to work digitally
in a creative way, where it doesn't seem,
I guess kind of clinical,
I guess clinical's
the word that keeps coming to mind.
But, I don't know.
When you see Suburbicon, you'll have
to let me know, I have no idea.
But it doesn't feel quite
the same to me anymore.
- Does anyone have any thoughts on that?
(laughs)
- Nobody wants to get into that.
Well, you shot IMAX.
You shot 65 millimeter,
right, for most of it?
- Hayte, so Dunkirk was
IMAX and 65 millimeter.
- Yep.
- You know, I'm doing a
film in 65 Alexa right now.
It's like 100%, it's worse to me.
It sort of has a, anyway.
- Don't use any fill light, I think
that's the key for shooting digital.
You know, you have to do it pretty dark.
- And I have to learn filters again.
I just--
- When we shot Crimson
Peak, we had a filter
behind the lens, you know,
we had a diffusion filter.
- [Robert] Really?
- [Dan] Yeah.
And we did the same with Shape of Water.
We have a light probe inside the camera.
- [Robert] Well you're
still shooting film too?
- Yes.
- [Robert] Yes.
- Why don't you just
continue, try to continue,
shooting film, that way
you feel comfortable.
- It's never up to me.
(laughs)
You know that.
I mean, it's like, when do
you have that discussion?
Nobody wins that debate.
It depends on the movie.
You know, I was thinking,
the original Blade Runner
had such an effect on me when I saw it
in film school so long ago.
And the trailer, the scale of it,
I think somehow you
figured out how to do this.
Something you seem to be able to.
- I'd have to use an iPhone,
I'm fed up with this conversation,
I think it's,
it's what's in the frame.
- [Robert] It always is, isn't it?
- And how you light it, you know, I mean.
The first film I did
digitally was In Time.
And we made the decision
to shoot that digitally
because of the kind of film it was.
We wanted something, actually,
we wanted it a bit synthetic.
But, we were only gonna use
it for part of the film.
And then we just thought, whoa,
I don't see any difference.
And I just thought at that point,
you know, the time had come
to start shooting digitally.
- That's how I felt too.
- I don't really do anything differently.
I don't put any filters on it.
- [Robert] And how much do you--
- I never have.
I don't use fill light anyway.
So.
I haven't changed anything really.
- [Robert] So what do you do,
do you do anything different in post?
Do you find yourself--
- No, I do it in camera as much as I can.
Although, you know, they say obviously,
there's more latitude and stuff.
But I like, in Blade Runner,
we did all the colors in camera.
Everything's actually on the
digital negative, you know?
But, it's more fun doing it that way,
apart from anything else, of course it is.
- [Robert] Oh my god.
- So, I just basically
haven't changed at all.
- Good for you.
- You know, around town, I've
talked to various post houses,
who have said it feels
like they are seeing
more film this year, and then
if you talk to exhibitors,
Dunkirk is a great example, did,
you know, the film did very well
where it was shown with film projection.
What are your, all of your thoughts
on where film is going?
- You know, and I'm also kind of fed up
with the discussion in many ways.
And it's, it's, you know,
I think that discussion
has brought so much harm to, you know,
what's happening in the film industry.
And people always want
to polarize choices,
and simplify choices,
and of course for big production machines,
it's very easy to sort of, you
know, make things calculable.
And very often people want to
standardize things, you know.
They want to standardize exhibition,
you know, the way it gets exhibited,
standardize what you're shooting on.
But in the end, I mean,
you know, I think everybody
should shoot on whatever
they want to shoot on.
And I think we, all together as a group,
should make sure that we keep
all those choices on the table.
And by saying that this is
better or this is worse,
you start polarizing.
And you automatically, you ignore the fact
that there is no better,
there is no worse.
But, Roger feels
very comfortable on the
medium that he shoots on,
and he makes the most beautiful stuff.
And, Bob, so do you.
And Rachel, and Janusz, and Dan.
I also, I kind of really...
- We're fed up with this subject matter.
(panelists laugh)
- Well, let's move on.
- [Hayte] Sorry about that.
(panelists laugh)
- It's a distraction.
- So, before we started, you
commented that you wanted
your film to look like
someone else shot it.
- Correct, yeah.
- Explain that point.
- In the past, I would
visit Roger on the set.
And I would see his beautiful lighting,
and Roger was say, "How
is that backlight, Janusz?
"How is that backlight?"
And I said, no Roger, in
this movie, no back lights.
(panelists laugh)
I think, you know, the idea
of de-glamorizing the images,
I'm always strangely, I'm
always interested in that.
I didn't want that
classical Hollywood light.
I've altered my lighting style.
For the first time, I was
lighting with top light.
Which I usually don't do that,
because I find it very challenging,
and always scary when you get top light.
But this story permitted
for me to do that.
Where I don't mind a little
bit of shadows under the eyes.
Not on the girl, but on the guys.
On the girl you don't put shadows.
(panelist laughs)
But on the guys you can do shadows.
And different color palette.
You know, not many colorful lights.
You know, a little bit
more naturalistic looking.
And then, occasionally,
I would do the more
traditionalist stuff, back lighting stuff.
But I was trying to restrain myself
because the story was 100%
allowed me to do that.
And then of course, there
was this one great movie,
called All the President's Men.
And this picture happens right before
All the President's
Men, which is the story
of Pentagon Papers being
published by Washington Post,
where All The President's
Men are about Watergate.
In fact, we are finishing our movie
implying that maybe we are
the picture that happened
right before All the President's Men.
There's a little homage we do at the end.
And I think to me, the biggest objective
was to create images that feel relevant
to what's happening right
now to us as a nation,
and what's happening to the press,
what's happening with this administration
being really, really critical of press
and freedom of speech, and critical
of the constitutional
rights of all the citizens.
So, I wanted to make a movie
that feels contemporary,
although it's 1971, but
needed to feel contemporary.
The point where in the picture,
there is original recording
of Nixon, who says,
you know, Neil Sheehan, this cocksucker,
you know, he needs to be fired, you know?
And fired is the phrase that this fellow
adapted from Nixon.
Of course, in 1971, I was not here.
When I was in Poland, living in Poland,
the Vietnamese were the good guys.
So, this is completely another aspect
of demystifying Americans' honesty.
Because as I was growing up in Poland,
this was the beginning of Democracy.
This was the beginning of truth.
The movies that were made in the 70s
were the movies that I wanted
to come to America for.
So I think whether this was
a conscious decision or not,
what's happening right
now in this administration
and what's happening in our
movie has direct relations.
So, I wanted to make
something that feels relevant.
That feels like, you know, it was made now
for an audience of this age.
- What did you and Steven talk about?
I'm sure you had these very conversations.
- We actually do not have conversations,
to be honest with you.
He does his thing, I do my thing.
And that's the best thing I like to talk.
Because often when you
talk with directors,
and I've got very limited
experience with other directors.
You talk, you're sitting at a table,
you do all this theory,
it all just falls apart.
And you just wasted two weeks
talking about something that you never do.
So with Steven, he does
his thing, I do my thing.
And somehow we both see
this movie the same way.
And we enjoy making that movie.
His main concern is that people
look presentable and dignifying.
And that's my, I've got the same concern.
I want people to look dignifying.
So, as I said earlier, a lady
would get a little bit more light,
and Tom will not necessarily
get the same light.
Not to create Meryl to
look like a movie star,
but she's essentially the star.
She's Katharine Graham.
She's the owner of the Washington Post.
So you want her to have a presence
that is different than
all the other actors.
- To go back to what
you were saying before,
did you go to him and say, for this movie,
I don't want it to look like I shot it?
- No, because certain
things you don't reveal.
You don't, even after 27, 25 years.
You don't want to inform,
give too much information,
because then you subject
yourself to being questioned.
And sometimes I don't
really have an answer.
It just feels right.
You know, why is that light up there?
It's up there.
Why is,
I don't know.
It feels right for the story.
Okay, okay good.
And I remember during Schindler's List.
We were doing one scene at the table,
where the Jewish families
swallowing diamonds.
And this is one top light.
And I went to him, and
look man, this is dark,
I don't know if it's gonna come out.
And he says, well, it looks really great.
You feel liberated when
you don't have fear.
So same with this movie.
You want to take, we
all want to take chances
because it's not this
comfortable life we've chosen,
where we just make movies
and we work with movie stars.
We express ourself
artistically through our work.
And you want to take chances.
So when you work with collaborators
who are willing to do
this, and encourage you
to take the chances, then
it's the ideal thing.
That you don't mind
having two divorces, and,
(panelists laugh)
because that making movies is
so liberating to some degree.
So we don't talk much about
whether we're gonna ask him.
(upbeat music)
- Rachel.
There are still a limited number
of women shooting Hollywood movies today.
What has your experience been
as a woman in this business?
- I mean, my hope is that it's changing,
and changing fast, and it seems to be.
I mean, I feel like there's a real
sort of palpable momentum
out in the universe,
not so much politically right now,
but I think at least in
the Hollywood universe,
where there's a real
push to get more women
both directing and better roles for women.
And certainly for cinematographers,
there's still very few of us.
I think it's sort of
mind-blowing that there's,
you know, 51% women, and 4% female DPs.
Probably 0.05% female
gaffers, female key grips.
It doesn't make a whole lot
of sense to me, quite frankly.
I mean this is, our world
is dealing in emotion,
which is something that I think
women are known for doing quite well.
And, you know, it's really about
channeling empathy into visual imagery.
So, I think it's changing,
I hope it's changing.
Look, I'll never know what happens
behind closed doors, or why I
don't get hired for something,
but I've never had an experience
that made me feel any less than.
I think the big trick is just
to get to a point where
we're just considered DPs.
And we're not female DPs.
And when you think of the word
doctor or teacher, you don't think gender,
and it would be nice to get to a place
where DP meant either,
a director meant either,
or a gaffer meant either.
- For the rest of you, are you seeing
more women on crews, and or do you make
an effort to hire women on your crews?
- I always try to get some
women in the camera department.
Always.
And in the lighting,
but it's more difficult
in the lighting department and grips,
but in the camera department.
because it's just
changed the whole feeling
in the trucks, and the city's
getting much more relaxed.
So for me, it's a very big deal to try
to get some women in
the departments there.
- Bob, you were nodding too.
- No, it's a big change I
think in the last ten years.
And I think I have
three women electricians
right now working on the show I'm on.
And there's at least three,
and two of the loaders,
and one of the assistants are women.
And it isn't just the traditional roles.
You know, it used to be
the script sort of person,
all the pretties, you know,
hair, makeup, wardrobe.
It's all different now.
And assistant directors now,
it's completely different
and in a wonderful way,
because it really is
more of a, it was always a family,
but now it feels more of a community.
And I really like that.
- I totally agree.
In the camera department,
we have a little bit over 50% now.
Women.
It feels good, you know.
- Now, we didn't talk too much
about production on Dunkirk yet.
So, just to go back to that a bit.
Now, you shot on land,
in the air, in the water,
with you know, the IMAX and
the 65 millimeter cameras,
and you also did quite
a bit handheld I know.
What were some of the
big production challenges
that you faced in this film?
- It was for us very important
to sort of make it feel
like you're there, almost
like it's shot on a GoPro.
But we still wanted to take all
the advantage of the big format of IMAX.
So, we did a lot of engineering,
because there are just no off-the-shelf
solutions for anything you want to do.
So we did a lot of tinkering,
and I always loved that.
Coming up with mounts, and rigs,
and engineer stuff to
put cameras at places
where you normally wouldn't see them.
If you know the
limitations of the cockpit,
you know that you can only arm
the camera in from a certain direction.
So, Dennis Asaki, he
built us snorkel lenses
for the big format that had
knees and knuckles in them,
so we could literally operate them
by just twisting the lenses.
Or we could have the camera straight up,
and we would poke out like a little alien.
You know, those kind of
things we were building.
But then also, we built
splashbacks for the cameras
that open in certain ways,
so we could easily reload.
Because an IMAX camera has
only two minutes of film on it.
So all those kind of things can get
extremely time-consuming if you don't
come up with the right solutions.
Well, you have been shooting on the beach,
in worse situations, so
you're probably very aware
of the difficulties there
are in the salt water.
- Oh, I was younger, a bit.
(panel laughs)
- And didn't you also work with Panavision
on some development?
- Yeah, we worked with Panavision,
we worked with Arriflex.
We used to work with Moviecam, you know.
I mean, it's not really the
equipment, as we all agree.
It's like, the wardrobe designer,
what kind of sewing machine are you using.
Essentially, it's a sewing
machine, is that, you know.
But what we, how we
interpret the material,
what we put out, that's what is central.
The cameras, the lenses,
the lenses are you know.
It's what's happening right there,
and the choices that we
make, not whether they.
- Okay.
So, I'm gonna switch topics a little bit.
I'd like each of you to name a director,
living or dead, that
you've never worked with,
but you would like to
have worked with, and why.
- [Roger] Andrei Tarkovsky.
- [Carolyn] Okay, and why.
- He was a great director.
(panelists laugh)
I just love his films.
- There's too many for me.
Tarkovsky is one, Kurosawa, Sofia Coppola,
Wong Kar-Wai, Emir Kustarica,
I'm probably butchering the pronunciation.
- Kustarica, yeah.
- [Rachel] There's so many.
- Well, let's pick one.
Sofia, what about her work?
- I think Sofia has a really incredible
sense of visual language,
in conjunction with
really different storytelling.
I feel like every film she
makes is quite different,
but beautiful in its own way.
I think there's a respect
for the cinematography there
which is always a nice place
to enter the conversation.
- Bernardo Bertolucci.
You know, really classic movie maker,
made him one of the biggest and best
movies on the planet, I think, you know.
And how to tell the
stories for the cameras,
and not be afraid of that.
- Jean Truffaut, I'd say.
I love that, that would have been.
Or Melville.
Either of those guys.
That era of French film I just love.
- I would go with David Lean.
- It's difficult, though,
because you get very often,
or really your agent would ask
who you really want to work with.
And the people that you very often love,
or make the most beautiful films,
you kind of feel unneeded,
or unwanted, you know.
It's like what can you add to that thing.
So, maybe, you know, you should choose
to work with the people that you don't
sort of respect to death, but you know,
just think are good filmmakers,
and together you can maybe do
something more interesting.
- So says the DP who just
started working with Nolan,
and has brought so much to the table.
- Well, yeah, but thanks.
But, yeah, I mean, it's
very hard to say no,
of course to when somebody
like Chris asks you.
But, no, I just recognize
because it's always
so difficult to answer
that question, you know?
Because what your role is as a DP is,
I mean it's so personal sometimes.
And you have to at least
feel when you start
working with somebody that
there's a little space for you,
where you can sort of do your thing.
Or there's a little space,
you know, where you think,
oh, I can improve his work a little bit,
or I can steer his work or her work
a little bit in a different direction.
- Was there an image or a sequence
in a recent movie that just really
knocked you out, inspired
you, and if so, which ones?
- It's funny, I was, I went
to see a film yesterday,
Lucky, with Harry Dean Stanton.
And it's kind of a nice film.
But it inspired me to
re-watch Paris, Texas,
which I did last night.
And I think the last scene of Paris, Texas
is one of the most haunting
scenes in movie making, really.
I only mention it just 'cause
I was watching last night.
I was drawn to it 'cause
of Harry Dean Stanton.
- I'm with you.
- Just the pacing, and the performance,
and the emotion within the
scene, is just so beautiful.
- When you talk about the pace, you know,
I think that's the biggest
challenge right now.
In the old days, the pace was much slowly,
and you could really tell the camera,
and tell to the story right
now is just getting so fast.
Everything.
So you know, going back to this like
50s pace is just amazing.
And it's.
- Mentioning Melville, there's a scene
in Army of Shadows where they take this,
you know, resistance member who's given
information to the Nazis, this young kid.
And they stick him in the kitchen,
and they put him on a chair.
And it's a long scene,
where they're talking
about they're gonna kill him.
And it's like an empty abandoned house,
it's their safe house.
But this guy's sitting on the chair
with his hands behind the back,
and these two characters
are just discussing
in front of him how
they're gonna kill him.
And it goes, doesn't it?
It's just, they play it,
Melville plays it so long.
It becomes so kind of, yeah.
And if you just cut that, like
a lot of people would today.
- Into little pieces.
- [Roger] It would be nothing,
you know it would be nothing.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
- And it's just so,
you just can't get out of the scene.
He keeps you there, and
makes you watch this thing.
It's brilliant filmmaking.
So that's when, you know, when a filmmaker
transcends what's on the page.
You know, the idea of the scene,
they transcend it by
the pacing and the cuts,
and the spaces between the dialogue.
And that's when it becomes
really exciting, I think.
And that's why I've
loved working with Denis.
For me, he's doing that.
- And that's actually a very nice thing.
That we, today as filmmakers, have.
That, you know, is a much bigger
arsenal of reference materials.
I mean, we can start prepping a movie,
and we can go to screening room,
and watch, you know, Wages of Fear,
or The Battle of Algiers on the screen.
And learn and see what they did,
and copy it, or get inspired by it.
And that's kind of interesting.
There's so many great experiments done
through the history of cinema,
that we can just sort of use and abuse.
And I think that feels
quite nice, you know.
- I agree with you in part,
but on the other hand,
I've met a lot of people who don't
even know who filmmaker
Pierre Melville is.
- I've worked with people who don't,
who haven't seen a film before 1985.
And don't know film culture.
And I've done little talks
at Reel Harvard Film School,
where people have never
seen a Sidney Lumet movie.
And I was just astonished,
it is amazing to me.
We have it, and we're aware of it.
And it is a wonderful thing to draw on.
Has anyone started a movie
without sitting in the screening
room with the director at some point
in prep and looking at things.
It's just fantastic.
- Or photographers, still photographers.
- Still photography's
a really good example.
- How many people know the
great stills photographers?
You mention Salgardo, or Alex Webb
or something, and people go, who's that?
- So is there a solution?
I mean, what can be done to inspire
this sort of education that's missing?
- [Hayte] Nothing.
(panelists laugh)
- You need an intellectual.
- Do any of you go out and
do talks at film schools?
- Well, I'm always at,
I'll screen something,
and everyone, it's like the first time
they've ever seen a film made in 1980.
Or a film made in 1975.
It's like, what's that?
Nobody has seen, the guys
who reinvented movies for me
were all the New York
cinematographers in the 1960,
and the French, and the New Wave.
And Owen Roizman, Gordon Willis,
all the way back to Kaufman.
It's just not part of film school.
And I think when I went to film school,
I was really aware of films
were made in the 30s and 40s.
And they seemed to inform everything
I was thinking about, and
everything I was doing.
And it doesn't feel like
film students today.
And that's as far away
when I was in school
as the films of the 70s and 60s are now.
And yet it doesn't seem like
that's part of anybody's interests.
Or at least for most of the students
I've met or talked to at AFI, USC.
I don't know, I don't know
what the solutions are.
- I think it's so much about what's
just gone, the flavor of the day.
I remember being at film school,
and there was a
documentary director there.
Directed Song of Ceylon, which is a very,
Basil Dieter, a very
famous early documentary.
It was really quite radical.
And he was doing for us this
sort of film history course.
So we were expected to
watching these rather long
documentaries or sort
of studies on something.
So we go, and the first film
he showed was a Sergio Leone western.
And I thought that was fantastic.
Because his whole love of films went
that whole stretch, that whole distance
between this different kind of filmmaking.
And then we would see Battle of Algiers
or whatever, but it was just fantastic.
The whole breadth of filmmaking.
But I think it's got so narrowed now.
- [Robert] It really has, I think.
- It's just maybe an over
saturation of media available,
and so people are binge watching
television shows and all of these things.
And perhaps it's as simple as inspiring
someone to spend a year
watching movies again,
instead of the seven seasons
of this, that or the other thing.
- Virtual reality's been
a big topic these days.
Have any of you tried it, and what are
your thoughts on its potential?
- I'm doing a film right now,
and there are some scenes
that are set on the surface of Mars.
Now, we've met some people from JPL,
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
- Martians, we met some martians.
(panelists laugh)
- We actually met with
some people from Mars.
But they have that rover there now,
that actually is shooting images, 360.
And it's just shooting images,
and images, and images.
So they have stitched
all the images together,
and with a virtual reality googles,
you can actually walk
on the surface of Mars.
Which was incredible.
It was a very strange mood there,
a very strange atmosphere on Mars.
You know, the light, it's weirdly soft.
And the color, the quality of the light.
And it was very exciting, actually.
Very inspiring to use it
for something like that.
The other experience I
have with virtual reality
is going with my daughter
to an IMAX place here,
where you go on rides with goggles.
And she, you know, she loves it.
She's hysterical.
I had it on my head
for like three minutes,
and I wanted to vomit.
(panelists laugh)
It's a different generation, I don't know.
- Anyone else?
Hopefully not that particular experience.
- That's why that this well
would be shot till week two.
You know, that bit of, but
I have exactly the same,
after two minutes I have to throw up.
- Like, quietly shuffling over the surface
of Mars is fine, but it's
just being thrown down
a colorful tunnel with
cartoon figures is too much.
- Okay.
So a few more last questions
I wanted to touch on.
We'll start with you, Janusz.
Happiest accident while shooting.
- Getting image out of
focus being in the movie,
that's a happy accident, and being told,
wow, that's a really good image.
It was really an accident.
It came out of focus, but then
you use that out of focus,
and you employ it towards
telling the story.
In AI, when we introduce the little kid,
in the elevator, when
the elevator door opens,
I was looking through a long
lens, and was out of focus.
And the door open, and he start coming in.
And I say, oh my God,
that's a great image.
And Steven said, this is great.
Let him come all the way out
of focus into the sharpness.
Which is not a new technique,
but we stay on that image
long enough to really appreciate
the strength of that image.
- When we shot Solomon Kane,
we had a lot of rain there as well.
And we had the same problem
with fog on the rain deflectors.
And the director kept that in the movie.
He said, it looks amazing,
the fog is very, very strong
in the beginning, and
there's rotatings going on.
It's just disappearing and
opened up the landscape.
It looks fantastic, but it was just
a big mistake when we did it.
But it looks really cool now.
- Hayte?
- You know, in the last
film we kind of worked
a lot of momentum, so it was
all, for us, it was all about
happy accidents all the time, you know?
We were just keep shooting, keep shooting,
try not to be precious
about continuity too much.
Try not to be too precious
about the weather.
And then, every day you
have a moment you get lucky.
Where it's pure dumb luck that stuff
starts looking interesting.
We had some real accidents on the set.
We had one camera mounted on
the wing of a mock-up Spitfire,
that we were going to
catapult out in the sea.
And the divers, they
were all gonna be there.
And we were gonna retrieve
that camera, and we had a whole plan.
So the plane got catapulted,
and the divers were swimming to the plane,
but the plane literally
sank to the bottom,
like in a matter of like a few seconds.
So then it went to the sea bottom,
and the film couldn't be retrieved
for several hours, like
two hours or something.
And once we retrieved the film,
the camera was broken,
everything was soaked.
It was literally just
laying on the sea bottom.
But, our focus puller,
Bob Hall, and our loader,
they came up with a plan,
and they took the magazine
to the dark room, and they
poured fresh water over it,
and they sealed it, and
sent it back to America
in a container, you
know, emerged in water,
and the shot that actually
made it to the film.
It looked great.
I'm kind of almost thinking I should treat
all my, all my images with
salt sea water at some point.
(panelists laugh)
- Paul Thomas Anderson,
that I've worked with a lot,
loves accidents, he
loves things to go wrong.
He loves, you know, if the set
fell over, he'd be thrilled.
He wants things to just, he
wants something to go wrong.
And on There Will be
Blood, we were burning
an oil well, derrick out of wood,
and it was supposed to burn
a little bit and put it out.
And it caught on fire
and couldn't be put out.
So we had to shoot the entire sequence
kind of really fast,
in sort of a crazy way.
And it ended up working out really well
because of the chaos of that moment.
Even though we were all safe,
but it meant that we had
to run all over the place
in preconceived ways.
And I think it actually
made the scene work
in a much more interesting way.
And that's sort of what Paul's all about.
It's such a beautiful scene,
a really beautiful scene.
- Roger, Rachel?
- You know, mine, seriously just weather
things that you get lucky with.
It's, I don't really know
anything specifically.
- [Carolyn] Okay, and Rachel?
- I mean, I think that was
the one thing with celluloid,
is there would be no
shortage of happy accidents.
Whether it was, you know, a
mag getting slightly flashed
that turned out to be for the better,
or a flare that you didn't see
the extent of it until it got developed.
So, I think there were
sort of little accidents,
on Fruitvale that I feel like
there were a number of those.
On Fruitvale, we actually
had a similar thing as Bob.
We were only allowed to
shoot between 1:00 a.m.
And 5:00 a.m. on the BART platform.
So we were, it was just, you know,
we had football players, and
we were run and gunning it,
and it was not how we would
have done it in a perfect world,
but I think it actually
served the story quite well.
- Well, we're out of time.
So, I want to thank everyone
for joining us today.
- Thank you.
- And thank you for watching.
(upbeat music)
- Ready?
- [Man] Okay, quiet on set.
- And I look down the lens.
- Let's do it.
(camera shutter clicks)
(camera shutter clicks)
- Hi, I'm Margot Robbie.
- Bryan Cranston.
- Robert Pattinson.
- John Boyega.
- I'm Sam Rockwell.
- Willem Dafoe.
- Emma Stone.
- Allison Janney.
- Guillermo del Toro, and
thank you for watching.
- Thank you.
- Thank you for watching.
- Thanks for watching
The Hollywood Reporter.
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