By Iain Blair
It’s been 16 years since writer/director Todd Field’s last movie, the Oscar-nominated Little Children, but the wait has been worth it. His new film, Tár, another multi-faceted gem, is a drama about erotic obsession, the beauty of art and the ugliness of abusive behavior — all set in the highbrow world of classical music.
Todd Field
The film stars Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár, a superstar conductor and musician who’s also something of an obsessive dictator. She carefully micromanages her famed career and public image, while offstage her messy private life begins to spiral out of control.
I talked to Field — whose directorial debut was the Oscar-nominated 2001 drama In the Bedroom — about making the film, his love of post and dealing with visual effects. Tár was nominated for six Oscar awards this year, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Talk about working with your DP Florian Hoffmeister (BSC). How early did you start, and how did that affect building the look?
I had first seen Florian’s work on the Ridley Scott-produced The Terror, directed by Edward Berger for AMC. The quality of Florian’s lighting on the actors’ faces was so true, which is very impressive considering it’s all done onstage with a lot of blue- and greenscreen and contamination. It really struck me, as it’s the hardest thing to do.
We weren’t really looking for any particular lighting scheme on this, other than the truth of the locations and builds and sets. It was more about a baseline, and we began testing a lot very early on. We tested for about four months, which was a real luxury, as you usually never get that much time with a DP.
We had a New York shoot at the top that Florian couldn’t make, so he did a remote, and we went to colorist Tim Masick’s DI suite at Company 3 in New York and looked at various lens tests, trying to figure that out before we began prepping and shooting in Berlin.
ARRI Berlin ended up building a whole set of custom lenses for us, and a custom print emulsion system they now integrate into all their cameras, which is great for DPs. Now they can expose and have it baked into the file, whatever the emulsions are. So there’s a baseline now when they get into the color suite. It’s not the Wild West, and it gives the DP a lot more control and a foundation on which to build the look.
How long was the shoot, and how tough was it?
We had 65 days, which sounds like a lot, but it was very challenging because we shot in so many locations — ranging from New York and Berlin to Southeast Asia. We had nine days with the Dresden, which was amazing, but we had to do a lot of rehearsal for that – both the for the acting and for the music.
That was the only constant in the schedule, which included a lot of interiors, such as Tár’s childhood home; her old Berlin apartment; and various concert halls, hotels and restaurants. We had 250 scenes, and that meant many moves, so it was very tricky in terms of logistics.
Obviously, the audio for all the concert scenes was crucial. Did you record the music live onstage?
Yes, all of it, and not only was it all live, but the take you’re watching is the one we recorded multi-track on stage. There are no alternate takes, no tricks.
Tell us about post. Was it remote because of COVID? Where did you do it?
I really love the whole post process, although it can be very stressful as you start to go through all the footage and wonder if it’s any good at all. We began editing and all the post at the start of 2022 and were supposed to do it in Vienna, but both Vienna and London had COVID lockdowns. So we came up with another plan, which was to move to this 15th century nunnery outside Edinburgh, Scotland, and we were just surrounded by sheep and nature and no distractions. It was amazing, as we had nothing to do except edit seven days a week, and it worked out great.
Editor Monika Willi, known for her many years of collaboration with Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher, Time of the Wolf, The White Ribbon, Amour) cut this. How did you work together, and what were the main editing challenges?
I hadn’t worked with her before. She’s so disciplined and rigorous, which is exactly what this film required. In one way it was difficult since we were both away from our families for many months, but it also meant we could just concentrate on the editing without any interruptions and find the rhythms and pacing and performances that are always the big challenge of any edit.
We had our whole editing team with us – assistants, the VFX editor and so on – and it was so quiet and peaceful that we were able to do a lot of sound and Foley work there. We even had actors come up and do ADR in makeshift booths we built, and then we could send all that stuff back to Stephen Griffiths, our sound designer in London. That was the first part of post, so by the time we finished up there and headed down to Abbey Road to do our first temp mix, we were in very good shape.
It got very interesting once we were in Abbey Road and working with colorist Tim Masick at Company 3 and VFX supervisor Jake Nelson on the visual effects shots because we didn’t have much time. Once we locked picture in May, it was a real sprint to finish all the post in time for the Venice Film Festival. We did the final mix at Abbey Road with Deb Adair.
There are quite a few VFX. Who did them and what was entailed?
We had 300 VFX shots and several companies involved, including Residence Pictures, Framestore, Alchemy 24 and Syndicate, and I was very involved in all of it. I really enjoy working with VFX and how they can add so much in post. The first visual effects we needed were for the whole New York sequence, so I went to New York, and we did all the car stuff in the Battery Tunnel. We also shot on Staten Island.
It was a very surgical shoot since we had so little time to get what we needed. Then, in Berlin, most of the VFX work was cleanup and painting stuff out — a lot of removing unnecessary things in the frame. Almost all of the VFX — with the exception of the interior car set and gags, which we shot on a giant, brand-new LED stage in Berlin — were done with VFX supervisor Jake Nelson and his crew at Residence. Framestore was involved in stitching all the plates we shot in New York for the LED stage work, Alchemy 24 did some cleanup, and Syndicate did some compositing work.
Tell us about working with Company 3 colorist Tim Masick.
I love working with Tim. DP Darius Khondji (AFC, ASC) introduced us about 15 years ago, and I’ve worked exclusively with Tim ever since. He has the most delicate touch and exquisite sense of color in terms of what I respond to. The great thing about that history is that we were able to start working on the color very early on.
Even while Monika and I were editing in Scotland, I was doing remote sessions with Tim, and he worked on the grade off and on for months. By the time we did the final grade in August, he’d been working on it for half a year.
Did it turn out the way you first envisioned it?
When you’re writing and planning it, you have all these big dreams about what you think your film should be and look like, but it turned out even better thanks to a great team of collaborators.
Is it true you wrote it for Cate, and you wouldn’t have made it without her?
Yes. It’s the first time I’ve ever written something for anyone. Usually when I adapt material by other people, I just try to focus on the characters. I don’t want to think about specific actors. But on this, I’d been thinking about the character for a very long time, and Cate sort of appeared on my desk and just wouldn’t leave.
By the time I finished the script I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the role. Luckily, she said yes. Then she worked so hard on researching and preparing – everything from learning German to playing the piano. That’s Cate actually playing the piano, not some double. And she did all that while making two other films before we began shooting.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
