ICG JANUARY 2016 AMERICAN TALES. Five festival films that showcase the American experience Valentina I. Valentini

Transcription

1 ICG JANUARY 2016 AMERICAN TALES Five festival films that showcase the American experience Valentina I. Valentini Like the broad historical and cultural tapestry that blankets this nation, the quintessential American film narrative is elusive and hard to define. Indie film festivals, like this month s Sundance (probably the most critically praised of all such conclaves), showcase domestic features that are varied and hard to categorize. For example, Sundance has brought us American narratives as unique as Winter s Bone, Heathers, Dope, Gas Food Lodging, Like Crazy, Precious, Girlfight, Thirteen, and Beasts of the Southern Wild, among many others, and all are as different (and entertaining) as the American indie filmmakers who made them. 66

2 JANUARY 2016 ICG Frame grab from Diani and Devine Meet the Apocalypse courtesy of Matthias Schubert Frame grab from American Fable courtesy of Wyatt Garfield For the kick-off to this year s festival superhighway (starting with Sundance in late January and concluding with AFI in December), we found five features that present a unique perspective about what it means to become an American. All were shot by Guild cinematographers, several of whom are American immigrants. They include American Fable, the feature debut from Anne Hamilton set in the 1980 s Midwest about a girl living in a dark and sometimes magical world, shot by Wyatt Garfield. Manchester-by-the- Sea is a family drama set in a quintessential Massachusetts town, written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan and shot by Jody Lee Lipes and Petr Hlinomaz. The Intervention shot by Polly Morgan comes from first-time director/veteran actor Clea DuVall and follows a group of 30-somethings trying to help one of their group through a failing marriage. Diani and Devine Meet the Apocalypse is a road comedy shot by Matthias Schubert and starring real-life couple Etta Devine and Gabriel Diani (who also wrote and directed). Morris From America is a coming-of-age story about a 13-year-old American living in Germany from director Chad Hartigan and DP Sean McElwee (who took home the 2013 Sundance Audience Award for This Is Martin Bonner). We asked each festival-bound DP to provide some insight into these American tales from their initial thoughts while reading the script, to creating visuals that complement their stories, to collaborating with their directors and the shoot itself. The Beginnings Schubert on Diani and Devine: I wanted it to feel clean, controlled and precise. Its three acts are very different in what the cinematography calls for, starting more claustrophobic mostly inside the couple s apartment, becoming vast and open when they leave the city and ending up somewhere in the middle as they become prisoners at the Muskrat Lodge. Act Two is where I got to show off the boundless landscapes of the desert in and around Southern California. I m originally from Edmonton, Canada, and the desert 67

3 ICG JANUARY 2016 Main Image: Diani and Devine Meet the Apocalypse / Courtesy of Austin Harris Inset: Diani and Devine Meet the Apocalypse DP Matthias Schubert / Courtesy of Schubert landscape has been one of my favorite things the United States has to offer. The dilapidated houses and abandoned water park, dried-out lakebed, endless roads and sweeping expanses were a joy to capture. Morgan on The Intervention: The script was brilliantly written, managing to create a very real drama that had both hilarious and also very sad, emotional moments, so the visuals needed to have a natural photographic style that let the story unfold while still supporting the emotional narrative. When I first read it, I felt that I knew the characters intimately; they felt like friends of mine. Just like The Big Chill managed to represent a generation, I feel like this film represents my generation today. Lipes on Manchester: I think Kenny is a little bit allergic to planning, so a lot of it was in the moment, watching the rehearsal and responding to what happens. But at the same time, it doesn t feel like a Mumblecore film. The camera is locked down and there isn t a lot of handheld. The camera feels like it s in a place that was chosen. Visualizing America McElwee on Morris: There were always discussions surrounding and I hate to generalize about these kinds of things integrating an American style with the European style of filmmaking. But that s sort of exactly what this character was going through. To generalize again: with European cinema I think about meticulous compositions, a very patient pace, and a more muted palette. To add our American sensibilities we threw in a lot of color and camera movement. Our lead spends most of his time at a youth center surrounded by kids, so anytime he was around there, we always wanted the camera to have a lot of energy. Morgan: We shot just outside Savannah, Georgia, on an old cotton plantation that has a deep history within the slave trade. In fact, most of the slaves were sold after the British girlfriend of the owner came to visit the property in the 1800s and wrote a scathing letter that was published in the British press on how the slaves were abused. America has so many meanings for me as a British alien living within its borders, and despite its sordid past, [Savannah] is beautiful; we tried to contextualize the story within its location by shooting a lot of B-roll of the surrounding nature and wildlife. Hlinomaz on Manchester: I m an immigrant, born in former Czechoslovakia when it was still under Communist reign. I came to the United States thirty years ago because I needed freedom in my life. I now have an American wife, two American sons and freedom in my life and in filmmaking. This film is an American story about a small community north of Boston. Visually, we decided on not a lot of camera movement but with open compositions that allowed the actors freedom to move about within the frame. Garfield on American Fable: I ve spent a lot of time driving across the U.S. and hiking in the wilderness. And 68

4 JANUARY 2016 ICG Frame grab from The Intervention courtesy of Polly Morgan Frame grab from Morris From America courtesy of Sean McElwee despite all the expansiveness, we re extremely insulated from the rest of the world. This story is about a young girl growing up on a farm in the Midwest where she s told she lives in the greatest place on earth a proud but naïve point of view. She is an imaginative, inquisitive kid, and when she discovers a shadowy stranger from the outside world trapped in an abandoned silo, she s drawn toward him because he feeds her knowledge and culture she can t get from home. That s her main conflict and our main visual contrast the expansive, amber fields of her homeland and the dark, mysterious world of the unknown, which could be her ruin or a path to enlightenment. On The Set Morgan: This was a new experience for me, as the writer and director was also one of the leads in the film, plus it was her first time in the director s seat. I was shooting a TV show right up to two weeks before the shoot, so Clea and I would have long Skype meetings on weekends discussing the style and tone of the script and in-depth conversations about the characters. We spent so many hours doing this that once I got to Savannah I d mapped out the entire film and felt I knew it really well. Middle and Bottom Images from Manchester-by-the-Sea courtesy of Jody Lee Lipes 69

5 ICG JANUARY That preparation really helped us complete the short 18- day schedule. Schubert: Every director is different in terms of the amount of micromanaging they do, and I don t mean that in a negative way. In this case, Etta, Gabe and I met many times in advance to plan out precisely every scene and every shot, hoping to leave little room for improvisation. Not to say we didn t come up with things on the spot, but we did stick to our list as a basis and sometimes had the time to add to it. [The directors] were acting in almost every scene, so it was important for us to know in advance what we were getting into visually, since they wouldn t have a chance, on the day, to check what I was up to. McElwee: No matter what country you re from, making a movie is a collaborative process. Chad and I are a special situation as we went to film school together, have known each other for 16 years and have been making movies for nine. Chad will say, Maybe we can do that Boogie Nights shot right here, and I ll know exactly what he s talking about. Having that shorthand with someone you ve known for so long is really important; the less you can sit around and talk about your shots, the more time you have to actually shoot them. Garfield: We constructed the farm world with sweeping camera movement and warming filters like Gold 2 and Tobacco 1/4, depending on cloud conditions. The stranger in the silo commanded a slower, shiftier, unsettling motion, which sort of draws her in when she should be backing away. On past films I ve used controlled movement to strike tone, drive suspense or lend perspective, but on this project it became a central storytelling device, Frame grab above from Morris From America courtesy of Sean McElwee Inset: Sean McElwee photo courtesy of Bettina Keller Diani and Devine Meet the Apocalypse / Courtesy of Austin Harris Frame grab from American Fable courtesy of Wyatt Garfield

6 JANUARY 2016 ICG Main Image: Frame grab from American Fable courtesy of Wyatt Garfield Inset: Wyatt Garfield on set of American Fable constantly leading and revealing people and objects. When we ran out of our limited Steadicam days, we achieved a similar feel by mounting a mini-jib on our Fisher 11. We d float the camera from a Lambda head on the end of the jib, and I d operate it from the head while giving signals to the dolly grip to match my movement. It was a lot of work for what ended up feeling like Steadicam, but it also allowed us to do some things that Steadicam can t do, like start at floor height and boom over someone s head, or swing out over a bed or table. The Tools Lipes: Kenny and I really wanted to shoot on film. Most of my narrative work has been on film, but ultimately it was decided that the time and financial sacrifice weren t worth it, so we decided to shoot on the next best thing Alexa. We didn t want anything that felt too contemporary, cold or sharp, the way a digital camera can feel. We shot with Canon K35 lenses and wide-open most of the time to make it even softer around the edges. Pairing the [Alexa s] high-resolution images with a very soft, almost defective set of lenses at an open gate so as to see all the way to the worst part of the lenses and using shallow depth of field allowed us to accentuate that kind of character. Garfield: When shooting digital, I like to preview the post house s film print LUT on set rather than view a Log image so that I m not putting off any creative decisions. Because of the amount of Steadicam work we were doing, I didn t want to deal with an external LUT box, so I pushed for the Arri Amira, which is one of very few cameras that can preview third-party 3D LUTs in camera. The beauty of this workflow is that it allows continuity between the image on set, the dailies and the starting point at the DI. Amira s other advantage is the ability to record 3K ProRes in camera, which was great because we were cropping down to 2.39, so we needed that extra resolution. Morgan: I decided to shoot with the Sony F55 and get a more textural feel to the image, purposely trying to move away from the Alexa look that we have all grown so used to. Despite losing some latitude, the F55 really excelled in color rendition, especially in the skin tones. And for lighting, we kept it quite minimal, and that was both because of the desire to take a naturalistic approach to the look and in part because there was little time and equipment. When I watch the film, it holds a look that is more filmic than some of the work I have done with the Alexa it has a painterly quality to it and a softness that I feel is very tactile. Schubert: We knew going in that this shoot was going to span many months. This was inevitable considering the conceit. Knowing this, we decided the camera would have to be one we owned. It also had to be manageable with a very small team and in low light. We shot before Sony had released the a7s II or Panasonic had released the Lumix GH4, so we decided to buy a couple of Canon 5D Mark IIIs. I ve always liked the image it produces; it s fantastic in low light, and it was possible for me to shoot all those desert montages alone, between April and July. Our lighting package was also very small, consisting of a couple of HMIs and a handful of 1-by-1 Litepanels. 71