SDCC 2018: Women in Hollywood, Location Managers, Superhero Composers, Top Sitcoms, and A Motion-Capture Monster

Posted on July 29, 2018 at 8:00 am

Some of what I saw at San Diego Comic-Con 2018, with excerpts from my coverage at Rogerebert.com and Thecredits.org:

Behind the scenes of The Big Bang Theory, The Good Place, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Though it was billed as a panel of “The Big Bang Theory” writers, two of the stars showed up, Kunal Nayyar and Mayim Bialik.

Bialik said about the dress Sheldon described on the show as “looking like a pile of swans,” “We wanted Amy to have a dress that embodied all of her dreams and wishes. Why have just one? If she loves it, it’s not going to look silly.” Nayyar was not impressed with her description of the difficulties of the hoop skirt. “Did you have to ride a seahorse as Aquaman?”

On “The Good Place,”

Kristen Bell (Eleanor) envies her character’s forthright snark. “Eleanor is the ticker tape in my head of nasty, sassy things, not necessarily that I want to say, but I’m definitely thinking about anyone that I see. I don’t find that I get good results in real life when I say that, and I’m looking for good results, guys. I’m looking for smiles and happiness. And so I don’t say them but I do share that wicked, dark sensibility with Eleanor.”

They found Jumanji in Hawaii, Skull Island in Vietnam, Hogwarts in England, and Wakanda in South Africa. The script calls for a 1970’s gas station or a Jane Austen-era house of an earl or the topography of another planet? Location scouts are the visual artists and logistical wizards who find the places that you see on the screen and oversee all of the details to make sure the crew has what they need and that, like Boy Scouts, they leave the place better than they found it. A panel of location managers talked about finding a way for three helicopters to land in London’s Trafalgar Square. Their job is to take the creative vision of the writer, director, and production designer and “turn it into reality. We give them options, narrow it down, and then handle all of the permits, trashcans, port-a-potties, places to prepare and serve food, and parking spaces” for a crew that could include hundreds of people and all of their equipment. “It’s kind of like a moving circus.” They have to coordinate with local police and fire crews and make sure the area is safe for the cast and crew. “And most important,” he said, “is preservation. We leave it the way it was, if not better.” Sometimes pre-production schedules are so long that they come on board before the director, and just do the best they can, based on the script, preparing a number of options to present when the director is selected.

Composers talked about creating music for superheroes to save the world by.

Christophe Beck composed the music for the “Ant-Man” movies, matching the tone of the movie’s visuals and storyline. “It had to be quirky and off-beat but still making sure it was in the Marvel universe.” He explained that most popular music is in four beats to the bar, but he created this score in 7/8. “There’s like an extra beat in every bar.” For the Wasp character, he did five beats to the bar “to give her forward movement and great energy.” He found himself creating “a darker version of the theme” that was not right for the film but matched the end credit sequence.

I saw two panels of women working in Hollywood.

There was some good news at Leslie Combemale’s third annual Women Rocking Hollywood panel at San Diego Comic-Con. Women in Film LA director Kirsten Schaffer told the packed room that in the era of #MeToo and inclusion riders, “every studio and network has a program” to encourage and support women at every level of film production. When studios were invited sign up for WIF’s Reframe initiative, which is designed to work inside the system through conversations, resources, and data to assess progress, 35 immediately agreed. WIF is also going to be issuing a gender parity stamp—“think LEED certified or USDA organic—to let the public know which productions are close to 50/50. Their “Flip the Script” series of short films uses humor and empathy to show what women in film productions go through by using actual dialogue but switching the gender of the characters…A panel called “You Do What? Women in Film Production” featured Lauren Haroutunian (cinematographer, “Fangirling”), Alicia Varela (first AC, “Video Game High School”), Lolita Ritmanis (composer, “Batman Beyond”), Sylwia Dudzinska (AD, “You’re the Worst”), and Maritte Go (line producer, “Sleight”) discussing work in traditionally male-dominated fields of production, moderated by publicist Brittany Sandler.

And I really loved talking to Jason Liles about playing a gorilla in “Rampage” and two monsters in the upcoming “Godzilla” movie.

I started studying my butt off, going to the L.A. Zoo just watching gorillas for hours, watching them be still but also watching them be alive in stillness. That’s really key, not just running around but just being. I watched “Planet of the Apes” behind the scenes, “King Kong” behind the scenes and anything with Andy Serkis or Terry Notary. I watched a lot of Koko the gorilla who learned to sign, every bit of footage I could find on her, and tons of documentaries. You just type in “gorilla documentary” on YouTube. It’s incredible the amount of stuff that comes up. So I found what was the most useful for me and just rewatched it and studied it.

Then I got brought on to the film and trained with Terry Notary who is King Kong and Kong in “Kong: Skull Island” and Rocket in “Planet of the Apes.” He’s done so many characters and coached some incredible performances out of actors. He trained me for three weeks in the Santa Monica mountains on all fours, hundreds of hours of miles with these arm extensions, learning to engage my senses as a gorilla and strip down what makes me Jason and a man and an American and a human and just be an ape. So it was a huge process. He got it to where I could basically lucid dream while awake as a gorilla. I can’t even describe it; I felt like I could fly at some moments. It was crazy.

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Interview: Middlebury New Filmmakers Film Festival

Posted on July 28, 2018 at 9:05 pm

The Middlebury New Filmmakers Film Festival, which takes place every August in the picturesque college town of Middlebury, Vermont, is unique in its focus on the first and second movies of novice filmmakers. From August 23–26, this year’s festival features a tribute to “Hoop Dreams” director Steve James and a slate of “films as journalism.”

Jay Craven, MNFF, Artistic Producer, Lloyd Komesar, MNFF Producer, and Phoebe Lewis, MNFF Associate Producer answered my questions about the festival.

How did this festival get started?

Lloyd Komesar attended a screening of Jay Craven’s 2013 film, Northern Borders (with Bruce Dern and Genevieve Bujold) at the Brandon, Vermont town hall — and spoke to Jay afterwards. They kept in contact and Lloyd proposed that they start a film festival. Lloyd had this idea to focus on new filmmakers and Jay refined this by suggesting a showcase for outstanding first and second time filmmakers — Lloyd agreed — and they started planning the inaugural Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival in July 2014. Thirteen months later, the first MNFF launched.

Why the focus on new filmmakers?

New filmmakers often receive too little support at larger film festivals. By dedicating all our efforts to encouraging and promoting emerging new talent MNFF has carved out a valuable niche and offers many beginning filmmakers a legit chance to have their film screened.

How are the films selected?

Filmmakers apply through Withoutabox and Film Freeway and can submit shorts or features — documentary, narrative, animation, experimental. We have programmers who do the initial screening. Artistic Director Jay Craven then screens films rated in the top 20% and selects the films that will play at the Festival. He also curates approximately 10–12 films that were not submitted. Jay consults with Lloyd fairly broadly — and, together, they discuss and decide special events, guests, honorees — who have included documentary filmmakers Barbara Kopple, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, and Bill and Turner Ross, writers Russell Banks, Jay Parini and Dick Lehr, actors Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Murphy and many others.

What are some of the highlights of this year’s festival?

Our Opening Night film, “Personal Statement,” by first-time director Juliane Dressner, is exceptional. It recently opened AFI Docs to great acclaim. We will be honoring the distinguished documentary filmmaker Steve James and screening his latest film, the Oscar-nominated “Abacus: Small Enough To Jail.” First time director Tom Herman is bringing his marvelous film, “Dateline-Saigon,” to Middlebury for a Vermont premiere. The film brilliantly tells the story of the first American journalists to cover the Vietnam War in early 60s Saigon. Academy Award winner Peter Davis will join us for a tribute screening of his first film, the seminal “Hearts & Minds,” released in 1974 and often cited as the greatest documentary ever done about the Vietnam War. We must mention the greatly anticipated appearance of David Wasco and Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, Oscar-winning Production Designers for “La La Land,” who we will honor for their sustained excellence in this crucial aspect of movie making. Mohammed Naqvi, the intrepid and fearless Pakistani filmmaker, will be receiving our Courage in Filmmaking Award. And we will close out the Festival this year with the very moving documentary, “The Sentence,” directed by first timer Rudy Valdez.

When do films become journalism?

Most documentaries are forms of journalism, as reporting, feature journalism, or investigative journalism. The work explores any number of situations with some outcomes that are sort of predictable and others that are not. We’re paying special attention this year to documentary filmmaking that functions as investigative journalism — where the filmmakers are trying to discover the currently unknown and take us to substantially new understandings of their subject matter.

Why the focus on production designers?

Production designers are as important as any creative player on the filmmaking team. What we see on screen is the result of the world they create, visually — the colors, textures, props, ambient qualities, period specificity. They command the largest department on the project, usually — and intersect directly with what camera and lighting contribute. They are essential players — and the Wascos, our special honorees at MNFF, are among the very best.

What films have been the audience favorites at your previous festivals?

We’d start with “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” from Alexandra Dean, which wowed the audience last year. “Among the Believers,” from Hemal Trevedi and Mo Naqvi, riveted its audience in 2016. “The Guys Next Door,” from Amy Geller and Allie Humenuk, was a genuine audience favorite that year, as well. Our Opening Night film from 2016, “Walk With Me: The Trials of Damon J. Keith,” from Jesse Nesser, lingered in people’s minds for months, as did last year’s opener, the hilarious and poignant “Take My Nose, Please,” from Joan Kron. Other favorites: “Captain Fantastic,” “Peter and the Farm,” “God Knows Where I Am,” “Dina,” “The Peacemaker,” “Abundant Acreage Available,” “Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George,” “Landfill Harmonic” and “The Wolfpack.”

What do you hope for this festival in the future?

We hope for continued dynamism of the festival experience, with all of the anticipation and investment we see from audiences and filmmakers. We want the audience to continue to grow and to develop further appeal to young people, which is why we have created a Kids & Family Day at MNFF this year, which will feature the Sundance favorite, Science Fair. We’re also working to develop our audience among college and high school students. And we want to keep expanding our “family” of emerging filmmakers. We love producing our special events — and like to keep mixing up the scope and variety of who we bring to our audiences. With four years under our belts, there is much to build on and many new roads to go down, but at its core, the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival will always be about providing a welcoming home for first and second timers.

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San Diego Comic-Con 2018

Posted on July 24, 2018 at 4:05 pm

I’m back from San Diego Comic-Con still a little bit dazed and dazzled with everything I saw. More details coming soon, but for now, some of my favorite costumes.

All photos copyright Nell Minow 2018.

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AFI Docs 2018 — You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Posted on June 14, 2018 at 7:55 am

From space to skates. From doctors in a remote New Mexico town to toddlers competing in a beauty contest in Brazil to Brooklyn teenagers trying to get into college and queer and trans athletes trying to get a chance to compete and politicians trying to fight the forces undermining democracy. There is no superhero blockbuster, no story of vampires in love, no comedy about college friends catching up 20 years later that can come close to the heartwarming, terrifying, passionately humane impact of a documentary. And every year, in Washington DC, the American Film Institute Docs festival brings together the best from the US and abroad, from established, award-winning filmmakers and first-timers making the most of micro-budgets.

Some are stories of the past. The best-known documentary of WWII was “Memphis Belle,” directed by Hollywood legend William Wyler. Using footage Wyler shot from the National Archives, director Erik Nelson has made a new film called “The Cold Blue,” featuring gripping narration from some of the last surviving B-17 pilots. Some are stories of the future. Rory Kennedy’s “Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow” shows us that the most important part of our voyages into space is not what we learn about other planets but what we learn about our own, as new missions give us critical data about the state of our environment. Some are intimate family stories, like “Witkin and Witkin,” about septuagenarian twin artists, and “The Distant Barking of Dogs,” about a boy and his grandmother who live just miles from the war in Ukraine. Others tell the stories of remarkable people like Father Theodore Hesburgh, Gilda Radner, Alexander McQueen, and Australian musician Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. Some are about unsung heroes, those working to protect children, rehabilitate prisoners, and open up opportunities for oppressed people.

Some documentary stories are on a global scale, or even beyond, into outer space. Some help us understand the very medium of film itself. “Hal” is the story of director Hal Ashby (“Shampoo,” “Coming Home,” “Being There”).

Some take us places we would otherwise never get to see, like “Into the Okavango,” a stunning journey down an African river.

This year’s Charles Guggenheim Symposium honoree is Steve James (“Hoop Dreams,” “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,” “The Interrupters,” “Life, Itself”), an extraordinary filmmaker who truly understands that the essence of documentary filmmaking is empathy. Documentaries can be tragic, provocative, infuriating, inspiring, heartwarming, informative, and hilarious, in any combination or all of the above. Just like life.

AFI Docs: June 13–17, 2018, Washington D.C.

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Ebertfest 2018

Posted on April 22, 2018 at 10:01 am

Twenty years ago, Champaign, Illinois native Roger Ebert began what was then called the “overlooked” film festival, following a very successful screening of “2001: A Space Odyssey” on the campus of the University of Illinois to celebrate the birth of the HAL computer. According to the film HAL began at the university on January 12, 1992, a date still far in the future when the film was released in 1968, now half a century ago.

Twenty years later and five years after the death of its beloved founder, the most influential movie critic of all time, Ebert’s widow Chaz has kept the film going very much in the spirit of the man who called movies “an empathy machine.” Unlike most festivals, where people dash around to stand in long lines in many different venues to see not-yet-released films and there is enormous pressure and competition to see the most and the best, the festival now lovingly termed Ebertfest has an extraordinary sense of community because only one film is shown at a time and everyone watches everything together in one of the grandest venues in the country, the magnificent Virginia Theater, with its enormous screen and impeccable projection (on film!) and audio.

It was an honor and a thrill to share the critics panel with so many people whose work I love and so many who have become my friends.

I especially enjoyed seeing three very different films on Saturday, all brilliantly done and all about fathers and daughters: “Interstellar,” “Selena,” and “Belle.” It was very moving to see the tributes to the “three queens of cinema,” Amma Asante (“Belle”), Julie Dash (“Daughters of the Dust”), and Ava DuVernay (“13th”). One of my favorite films of last year was “Columbus,” and it was even more dazzling on the 70-foot screen. I got a huge kick out of co-presenting this year’s silent film with live musical accompaniment from the Alloy Orchestra, a cherished Ebertfest tradition. The selection this year was the Japanese film, “A Page of Madness,” a challenging story written by Yasunari Kawabata, who would go on to become the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

All of the panels, introductions, and Q&A sessions are available on YouTube. And be sure to read Chaz’s comments about the history and aspirations of the festival in Variety.

Jeff Dowd, who inspired “The Dude” character from “The Big Lebowski” said that it was Roger Ebert who really tied the room together. Ava DuVernay talked about the searing documentary “13th” — and about meeting “Mr. Thumbman,” Roger Ebert, when she was 8 years old. She teared up talking about his life-changing support for her first film, the one she made with the $50,000 she was saving to buy a house, including three reviews and 27 tweets. She also had a nice shout-out to Carrie Rickey, the other critic who championed the film, not knowing she was sitting in the audience. Also, there were dancing dinosaurs celebrating the festival’s 20th anniversary, because why not. On to the next 20!

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