By Iain Blair
Based on the New York Times bestseller “A Man Called Ove,” A Man Called Otto tells the story of Otto Anderson (Tom Hanks), a grumpy loner who no longer sees the purpose in his life following the tragic loss of his wife. Otto is ready to end it all, but his plans are interrupted when a lively young family moves in next door.
Director Marc Forster and Tom Hanks on-set.
It was directed by versatile helmer Marc Forster, whose credits include World War Z, Quantum of Solace, Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland and The Kite Runner.
I spoke with Forster about making the film, dealing with all the VFX, and how he handled Hanks’ demanding cat co-star.
Talk about the look you and your DP Matthias Koenigswieser went for, given that there are a lot of flashbacks.
I wanted it to look and feel very real and grounded. We shot in Pittsburgh in the winter, so all the present-day scenes are quite gray, and the colors are not really popping. It’s all very monochrome.
Then, when we go into all the flashbacks, they’re much warmer, with much more color, because Otto’s thinking about his wife and all his happy memories of her. We shot in this cul-de-sac, and in the flashbacks, the neighborhood is bright; it’s spring, and the trees are green. But in the present day, it’s a finished housing development. We found the exact neighborhood we wanted, but since it was winter, we needed a lot of VFX to deal with the flashback visuals.
What about post. Where did you do it?
We did all the post in London. We cut it in offices in Soho and mixed all the sound at the new De Lane Lea studios, which are just incredible… I highly recommend. We had a great sound team — supervising sound editor Simon Chase and mixers Chris Burdon and Gilbert Lake. We did ADR at Molinare. Then, because composer Thomas Newman is based in LA, we recorded the score here in LA.
I’m very involved with sound as it’s this whole other layer that is really half the film. We did a lot of overlapping of sound between today and the past, and there’s so much you can do just with raising and lowering the volume of the sound.
Do you like the post process?
I love post. I love being on-set, but you’re dealing with a lot more pressure and time constraints. In post, you can reflect more on the story you’re telling, and on this film, there was this fine line we had to find between the drama and the comedy. You can show the work as you go, which is very important with this sort of film because often you need to mix a line a bit higher if people are still laughing at the line before, so they don’t miss it. So we were doing a lot of that kind of detailed work in post, which I really enjoy.
Your longtime editor Matt Chessé, ACE, cut this. How did you work together and what were the main editing challenges?
We’ve been collaborating for 23 years now on nearly all my films, so we have this great shorthand. He was based in London, and we sent him dailies from Pittsburgh. He would send me cuts as he was working on the assembly, and I would give him feedback. That way we made sure there were no pickups missing and that I was getting everything we needed. We had this constant flow of data. He was able to send me stuff on my phone while I was on-set so I could see what worked and what didn’t. It’s so much easier than in the old days.
As for the challenges, the big one was all the flashbacks. In the book they all have a chapter, and in the Swedish film they’re much longer. We changed them to be much shorter because I felt the emotional connection between Otto and his younger self was key. But I didn’t want to linger there too much. Instead I just gave enough information and exposition to tell the story and gradually reveal what had happened.
This isn’t an obvious VFX film, but you had many companies (Crafty Apes, Tryptyc, Light VFX, SSVFX, Tempest, Territory, Jamm, Axis and Goodbye Kansas) working on it. I’m guessing that was to do with the current global shortage of VFX artists?
You’re exactly right. It’s a big problem, the lack of manpower, and any place with good tax incentives — like the UK, Australia and Canada — makes it hard to get a good VFX crew now. That’s why we had to use so many companies. We had one company working on the cat, and we had to split up so much of the rest of the work because of our post schedule and release date in order to get it all done in time.
We did have a huge amount of VFX shots in the end – over 1,000 – but the majority of them were weather fixes. The big challenge of shooting somewhere like Pittsburgh in winter is that in the morning it can look like Alaska, but suddenly the sun’s out, all the snow melts and by afternoon it looks like Ibiza. So we had fake snow in the foreground and added VFX snow in the background in a lot of shots.
What was the most difficult VFX sequence to do?
It was the train sequence in the flashback scene when Otto first sees his future wife as she rushes to catch the train. Originally, we were going to shoot it at a real station in Pittsburgh, but we lost the location and ended up having to use an old station in Ohio and needed a lot of VFX to make it work. The buildings are real, but we had to create the whole train and tracks with VFX, and it was very tricky as we were on such a tight schedule.
How early did you start the VFX process, especially in terms of dealing with the cat?
We started fairly early, and the main visual effect I was worried about was the cat. It’s so hard to create a CG cat that looks real, so I felt we should really try to capture as much of the cat in-camera as possible, which we did. But sometimes the cat just wouldn’t cooperate, and it’s so hard to direct cats and dogs.
After the shoot we did a few greenscreen days with the cat because in post we just didn’t have the time or the budget to get the cat 100% right because there were too many shots. That way we could comp the cat into the shots we needed, but it was still a real task. In the end, I think about 10% of the cat shots are totally CG, like the one where its claw hangs in Otto’s trousers in the garage.
What about the DI? Who was the colorist and how closely did you work with them and the DP?
We did it at Company 3 with colorist Sofie Borup. We all go in and set the basic look, and then Matthias and Sofie go off and start color-timing it shot by shot. Then I come back at the end of the week and review what they’ve done and give my notes, and they keep working until we’re all happy.
What sort of film did you set out to make?
When I read the novel, I was laughing out loud, and I also got very emotional. Then I saw the Swedish film version and felt that Otto is like a Shakespearean character that works in any culture. The story really touched me, and I felt it needed to be shared with a wider audience as this life-affirming film. But it also has a lot of humor and absurd moments when you have to laugh or you’d just cry.
Did it turn out the way you first envisioned it?
It did. It’s what I visualized when I first read the book. I think Tom gives such a great performance and I’m very pleased with how it turned out.
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.
