Tag Archives: Martin Scorsese

Oscar-Nominated DP Rodrigo Prieto on Killers of the Flower Moon

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By Iain Blair

Martin Scorsese and DP Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC, first teamed up on The Wolf of Wall Street and followed that with Silence and The Irishman. Now they’ve collaborated on Killers of the Flower Moon, an epic Western and crime drama that tells the tragic true story of the infamous Osage murders of the 1920s. When the Osage Native Americans strike oil on their reservation in Oklahoma, a cattle baron (Robert De Niro) plots to murder tribal members and steal their wealth, even while he persuades his nephew (Leonardo DiCaprio) to marry an Osage woman (Lily Gladstone).

Rodrigo Prieto

I spoke with Prieto about shooting the film, which earned 10 Oscar nominations — including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography  — and how he collaborated with Scorsese on the look.

While this is another epic story from Marty, it’s also quite intimate. How did you collaborate on finding the right looks and tone?
You’re right in that it’s both epic in scope but also very intimate, and it took us quite a while to figure out both the looks and the focus of the story. The script was reworked quite a lot. It was the same with the look. I tested out all sorts of lenses and had different ideas about negatives and looks — even pinhole photography and infrared — all to see what felt right. We didn’t end up using many of those ideas in the movie, but they ultimately influenced other things we did do. The main idea that we ended up embracing was the visual representation of the different stories, which was most obviously manifested in the newsreel footage we shot.

Is it true you even used a vintage camera for those scenes?
Yes, we used a 1917 Bell & Howell camera that Scorsese owns. We oiled it up, got it back into mint working condition, hand-cranked that camera and shot the scenes on black-and-white negative.

Did you do a lot of research?
Yes, and a lot of the rest of the look of the film is based on the idea of how people are photographed and how they remember things. I did a lot of research on the start of color photography, and we created a LUT based on Autochrome photography, which the Lumiere brothers invented around 1903. That was one of the first techniques used to create color photography, and we emulated the feel that I had looking at what are basically black transparencies that have a very specific feel to the color.

That was the way we represented the descendants of the American immigrants, the white people and characters like Ernest (DiCaprio) and Hale (De Niro). Their part of the story has that look, but for all the Osage scenes, when they’re alone and not with white people, we photographed them on film negative. The look for that was based on 5219 stock and how that film negative looks on Vision film print. It’s a very naturalistic look. The colors are what we perceive as the colors of nature and underscore the Osage people’s connection to the land and nature.

The third look of the film is ENR-based, which we used toward the end, and it begins with the explosion of Mollie’s sister’s home. That’s when things really start unraveling and when Ernest’s guilt starts really kicking in… his confusion gets worse and worse, and she gets sicker and sicker. To illustrate all that, we transition into a much harsher look. I also used the ENR look for the last part of The Irishman. The feel of it is more desaturated in terms of color and higher contrast, and it looks a little nastier as it enhances the film grain even more. That’s the basic arc of the look of the movie.

When did you start working with colorist Yvan Lucas?
We met on Oliver Stone’s Alexander, which we color-timed in Paris at Éclair, and I fell in love with his work. We became good friends. For me it was a revelation the way he did digital color grading, which is really based on photochemical color grading in terms of his process. He basically uses printer lights, which is a very comfortable method for me. Instead of manipulating highlights and lowlights and midtones on every shot, which is essentially creating a new LUT for every shot, we just create a LUT and use printer lights. That’s why LUTs are so important to me because it’s really like your negative, even if you’re shooting digital. Since 99.9% of prints are actually digital DCPs, the LUTs become a crucial part of the feel of a movie.

How did you make all your camera and lens choices?
We shot it 35mm on ARRICAM LTs and STs, with the Sony Venice 2 for the digital scenes at dusk and night. The lenses were Panavision T Series anamorphic, and they were adapted for us by Panavision’s lens guru, Dan Sasaki. He detuned them a bit for us and also added a special coating that made the flares warmer than usual. I thought that was important because sometimes the blue flare, which is a characteristic of many anamorphics, feels too modern to me.

What were the main challenges of shooting this?
The main challenge was learning about the Osage culture, about Oklahoma at that time and the attitudes of whites to the Osage… and then finding ways to represent all that visually. Scorsese designed a lot of shots to give that sense you mentioned — a big story but also an intimate look at way the characters are living in the moment. So when we introduce Ernest and he gets out of the train, we do this big, swooping shot of the station that starts wide on a crane and then swoops in on Ernest. That’s Scorsese’s grammar, how he expresses himself, and I find that endlessly fascinating and so enjoyable to execute his ideas.

Basically, he designs the shots to give audiences all the information they need; you see the station and the town name, Fairfax, and then the character he’s introducing. Then there’s a drone shot that starts with the car  — we see Ernest driving with Henry Roan (William Belleau). It’s a red car on a green background, the same color contrast that many photographers used with Autochrome, so it’s a very conscious choice and design. Then we pull away and see the landscape with the oil. Again, it’s a way of looking at both the macro story and the intimate one.

What about dealing with all the VFX?
I’ve worked with VFX supervisor Pablo Helman before on other films, and the big challenge here was dealing with all the set extensions. We shot in Fairfax and all around the area, but the main street in Pawhuska, where we also shot, was better because it had more older buildings. We had bluescreen at the end of both streets, and Pablo extended both. That was a challenge in terms of the light and the bluescreen shadows. We also had to do extensions for the drone shots of Fairfax and the surrounding area, but most of the VFX involved clean-up and removing modern things. It helped a lot that not only were we shooting in the real locations, but that many of them hadn’t really changed. We didn’t have to do much work, and we didn’t need tons of crazy, spectacular VFX.

Tell us about the DI.
All the careful work we did with the LUTs in prep was essential, as Scorsese and his editor Thelma Schoonmaker [ACE] spent many months cutting all the material so they could get used to the look. It was crucial that the dailies they were editing with were as close as possible to what I intended. Yvan also supervised the dailies workflow.

We adjusted stuff in the DI, but it wasn’t a big departure from the dailies. We matched all the shots for continuity. The way we work is that Yvan does his pass first to match it all, and then if I want the scene to be darker, there’s an offset for everything since it already matches. That makes the DI work pretty simple. It also gives us time to do a window here, a window there.

For this film I was going for a higher level of contrast than in the others I’ve done with Scorsese. We really wanted to represent the darkness that’s happening in the story. The lighting helped us do that. The chiaroscuro was much stronger than in the other films, especially toward the end. But sometimes I did the opposite, like in the courtroom scene. The set was very light in color, and it was bright, overexposed, harsh light to underscore the inner turmoil. Sometimes you have to use ugly shots and ugly lighting to support the emotions of the story.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Flower Moon

Setting the Color for Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon

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Company 3 senior colorist Yvan Lucas began working with DP Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC, on the look of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon long before the film was in production. Lucas, who has collaborated with Prieto on most of the cinematographer’s work for nearly two decades, shares Prieto’s fondness of a film-style workflow in which filmmakers do as much as possible upfront to set appropriate looks, rather than attacking the footage with digital color grading tools after the photography is complete.

Flower Moon

Yvan Lucas

The two like to create unique show LUTs — conceptually, an idea similar to designing custom “film stocks” — that incorporate the director’s ideas and sensibilities so the cinematographer can light with an eye toward the final look and so other department heads can get an early idea how their paints and pigments will read in the final film.

While Lucas and Prieto are not alone in this way of working, they are quite vigorous about maintaining film-style protocols throughout, grading the dailies using only the LUTs and digital printer lights and even doing early passes of the final grade solely with the same tools photochemical color timers use. This makes sense when you realize that Lucas spent many years timing film in Paris on such visually striking films as Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children (for cinematographer Darius Khondji, AFC, ASC, and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet).

The ability to create LUTs that can seamlessly take colors from a specific type of camera original —film neg, LOG-C, SLOG and so forth — and push them in another direction to set a look, is a complex procedure that requires a strong eye and significant technical knowledge.

Imprecise LUTs can do more harm than good. And one limitation back when Lucas was working with Prieto on LUTs for Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman was an inability of color correctors at the time to isolate very specific hues to push in the desired direction. On that film, for example, the two were developing a custom Ektachrome-style LUT. “If you tried to just isolate reds,” Lucas offers, “you would usually end up also including skin tones.” Also, the resulting colors would often end up looking noisy.

The two had spoken about color and the limitations of digital grading technologies to really get the type of precision in a LUT that they hoped for. This got them thinking about going beyond the limitations and coming up with something that would allow them to get to the essential color information and isolate vectors more specifically. When designing one of the looks for Killers — the style of the early part of the film, which is based on the early 20th century Autochrome process — the production hired color rendering scientist Philippe Panzini. Panzini, who brought his color science expertise to the company that created Flame (Discreet Logic at the time and now Autodesk) and to many other companies since, was asked to design a box with sliders that could allow subtle shifts of colors as captured into the palette of Autochrome. Subsequently, color-rendering scientist Christophe Souchard took that design and turned it into an OFX plugin for Lucas’ FilmLight Baselight system.

Throughout the entire movie, Lucas also included a film emulation LUT based on Eastman Kodak’s 5219 500-T. This LUT helped confine everything — from the material actually shot on film to portions digitally captured with either Sony Venice or Phantom high-speed cameras — into the realm of color and contrast possible with imagery shot using that stock.

Lucas and Prieto used this plugin to create the Autochrome look at the start of the film, the ENR-style process (emulating the Technicolor photochemical process that adds contrast and slightly desaturates images) and the Technicolor imbibition process. The film combined these LUTs in different places.

While filmmakers like Scorsese and Prieto are very fond of this disciplined way of working, during the finishing stage they are always open to step out of the confines they created if doing so helps tell the story.

When it was time for final color, Lucas would work with Prieto and often Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker in one of Company 3’s New York color-grading theaters to fine-tune everything shot by shot. It was only at this stage that Lucas would introduce digital color-grading tools such as vignettes, keys, saturation, etc.

One such adjustment: During a section in the Autochrome portion of the film, there are some wide shots of an enormous tract of land that Scorsese felt should exhibit a more saturated green than the Autochrome process could have rendered. “He felt that emotionally, it was very important to see more of that green at that moment,” says Lucas, who then used keys and vignettes to isolate the vegetation and pulled back on the Autochrome just for those elements of the images.

Different cinematographers and colorists work in their own way. Some like to do a lot of the look creation up front, while others like to find it in the grading theater. “There are colorists who just start right out changing lift, gamma and gain and adding many secondaries,” Lucas says, “and they get beautiful results. But this is how Rodrigo and I like to work, and we’ve had a lot of success with it.”

The two also collaborated the same way on the film Barbie, building what they called the Techno-Barbie LUT that helped define the unique look of that film.

Video: The Irishman’s focused and intimate sound mixing

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Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, tells the story of organized crime in post-war America as seen through the eyes of World War II veteran Frank Sheeran (DeNiro), a hustler and hitman who worked alongside some of the most notorious figures of the 20th century. In the film, the actors have been famously de-aged, thanks to VFX house ILM, but it wasn’t just their faces that needed to be younger.

In this video interview, Academy Award-winning re-recording sound mixer and decades-long Scorsese collaborator Tom Fleischman — who will receive the Cinema Audio Society’s Career Achievement Award in January — talks about de-aging actors’ voices as well as the challenges of keeping the film’s sound focused and intimate.

“We really had to try and preserve the quality of their voices in spite of the fact we were trying to make them sound younger. And those edits are sometimes difficult to achieve without it being apparent to the audience. We tried to do various types of pitch changing and we us used different kinds of plugins. I listened to scenes from Serpico for Al Pacino and The King of Comedy for Bob DeNiro and tried to match the voice quality of what we had from The Irishman to those earlier movies.”

Fleischman worked on the film at New York’s Soundtrack.

Enjoy the video:

The Irishman editor Thelma Schoonmaker

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By Iain Blair

Editor Thelma Schoonmaker is a three-time Academy Award winner who has worked alongside filmmaker Martin Scorsese for almost 50 years. Simply put, Schoonmaker has been Scorsese’s go-to editor and key collaborator over the course of some 25 films, winning Oscars for Raging Bull, The Aviator and The Departed. The 79-year-old also received a career achievement award from the American Cinema Editors (ACE).

Thelma Schoonmaker

Schoonmaker cut Scorsese’s first feature, 1967’s Who’s That Knocking at My Door, and since 1980’s Raging Bull has worked on all of his features, receiving a number of Oscar nominations along the way. There are too many to name, but some highlights include The King of Comedy, After Hours, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Casino and Hugo.

Now Scorsese and Schoonmaker have once again turned their attention to the mob with The Irishman, which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including one for Shoonmaker’s editing work. Starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, it’s an epic saga that runs 3.5 hours and focuses on organized crime in post-war America. It’s told through the eyes of World War II veteran Frank Sheeran (De Niro). He’s a hustler and hitman who worked alongside some of the most notorious figures of the 20th century. Spanning decades, the film chronicles one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American history, the disappearance of legendary union boss Jimmy Hoffa. It also offers a monumental journey through the hidden corridors of organized crime — its inner workings, rivalries and connections to mainstream politics.

But there’s a twist to this latest mob drama that Scorsese directed for Netflix from a screenplay by Steven Zaillian. Gone are the flashy wise guys and the glamour of Goodfellas and Casino. Instead, the film examines the mundane nature of mob killings and the sad price any survivors pay in the end.

Here, Schoonmaker — who in addition to her film editing works to promote the films and writings of her late husband, famed British director Michael Powell (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus) — talks about cutting The Irishman, working with Scorsese and their long and storied collaboration.

The Irishman must have been very challenging to cut, just in terms of its 3.5-hour length?
Actually, it wasn’t very challenging to cut. It came together much more quickly than some of our other films because Scorsese and Steve Zaillian had created a very strong structure. I think some critics think I came up with this structure, but it was already there in the script. We didn’t have to restructure, which we do sometimes, and only dropped a few minor scenes.

Did you stay in New York cutting while he shot on location, or did you visit the set?
Almost everything in the The Irishman was shot in or around New York. The production was moving all over the place, so I never got to the set. I couldn’t afford the time.

When I last interviewed Marty, he told me that editing and post are his favorite parts of filmmaking. When the two of you sit down to edit, is it like having two editors in the room rather than a director and his editor?
Marty’s favorite part of filmmaking is editing, and he directs the editing after he finishes shooting. I do an assembly based on what he tells me in dailies and what I feel, and then we do all the rest of the editing together.

Could you give us some sense of how that collaboration works?
We’ve worked together for almost 50 years, and it’s a wonderful collaboration. He taught me how to edit at first, but then gradually it has become more of a collaboration. The best thing is that we both work for what is best for the film — it never becomes an ego battle.

How long did it take to edit the film, and what were the main challenges?
We edited for a year and the footage was so incredibly rich: the only challenge was to make sure we chose the best of it and took advantage of the wonderful improvisations the actors gave us. It was a complete joy for Scorsese and me to edit this film. After we locked the film, we turned over to ILM so they could do the “youthifying” of the actors. That took about seven months.

Could you talk about finding the overall structure and considerable use of flashbacks to tell the story?
Scorsese had such a strong concept for this film — and one of his most important ideas was to not explain too much. He respects the audience’s ability to figure things out themselves without pummeling them with facts. It was a bold choice and I was worried about it, frankly, at first. But he was absolutely right. He didn’t want the film to feel like a documentary. He wanted to use brushstrokes of history just to show how they affected the characters. The way the characters were developed in the film, particularly Frank Sheeran, the De Niro character, was what was most important.

Could you talk about the pacing, and how you and Marty kept its momentum going?
Scorsese was determined that The Irishman would have a slower pace than many films today. He gave the film a deceptive simplicity. Interestingly, our first audiences had no problem with this — they became gripped by the characters and kept saying they didn’t mind the length and loved the pace. Many of them said they wanted to see the film again right away.

There are several slo-mo sequences. Could you talk about why you used them and to what effect?
The Phantom camera slo-motion wedding sequence (250fps) near the end of the film was done to give the feeling of a funeral, instead of a wedding, because the DeNiro character has just been forced to do the worst thing he will ever do in his life. Scorsese wanted to hold on De Niro’s face and evoke what he is feeling and to study the Italian-American faces of the mobsters surrounding him. Instead of the joy a wedding is supposed to bring, there is a deep feeling of grief.

What was the most difficult sequence to cut and why?
The montage where De Niro repeatedly throws guns into the river after he has killed someone took some time to get right. It was very normal at first — and then we started violating the structure and jump cutting and shortening until we got the right feeling. It was fun.

There’s been a lot of talk about the digital de-aging process. How did it impact the edit?
Pablo Helman at ILM came up with the new de-aging process, and it works incredibly well. He would send shots and we would evaluate them and sometimes ask for changes — usually to be sure that we kept the amazing performances of De Niro, Pacino and Pesci intact. Sometimes we would put back in a few wrinkles if it meant we could keep the subtlety of De Niro’s acting, for example. Scorsese was adamant that he didn’t want to have younger actors play the three main parts in the beginning of the film. So he really wanted this “youthifying” process to work — and it does!

There’s a lot of graphic violence. How do you feel about that in the film?
Scorsese made the violence very quick in The Irishman and shot it in a deceptively simple way. There aren’t any complicated camera moves and flashy editing. Sometimes the violence takes place after a simple pan, when you least expect it because of the blandness of the setting. He wanted to show the banality of violence in the mob — that it is a job, and if you do it well, you get rewarded. There’s no morality involved.

Last time we talked, you were using the Lightworks editing system. Do you still use Lightworks, and if so, can you talk about the system’s advantages for you?
I use Lightworks because the editing surface is still the fastest and most efficient and most intuitive to use. Maintaining sync is different from all other NLE systems. You don’t correct sync by sync lock — if you go out of sync, Lightworks gives you a red icon with a number of frames that you are out of sync. You get to choose where you want to correct sync. Since editors place sound and picture on the timeline, adjusting sync where you want to adjust the sync is much more efficient.

You’ve been Marty’s editor since his very first film — a 50-year collaboration. What’s the secret?
I think Scorsese felt when he first met me that I would do what was right for his films — that there wouldn’t be ego battles. We work together extremely well. That’s all there is to it. There couldn’t be a better job.

Do you ever have strong disagreements about the editing?
If we do have disagreements, which is very rare, they are never strong. He is very open to experimentation. Sometimes we will screen two ways and see what the audience says. But that is very rare.

What’s next?
A movie about the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, based on the book “Killers of the Flower Moon” by David Grann.

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.

Martin Scorsese to receive VES Lifetime Achievement Award  

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The Visual Effects Society (VES) has named Martin Scorsese as the forthcoming recipient of the VES Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his valuable contributions to filmed entertainment. The award will be presented next year at the 18th Annual VES Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

The VES Lifetime Achievement Award, voted on by the VES Board of Directors, recognizes an outstanding body of work that has significantly contributed to the art and/or science of the visual effects industry.  The VES will honor Scorsese for “his artistry, expansive storytelling and gift for blending iconic imagery and unforgettable narrative.”

“Martin Scorsese is one of the most influential filmmakers in modern history and has made an indelible mark on filmed entertainment,” says Mike Chambers, VES board chair. “His work is a master class in storytelling, which has brought us some of the most memorable films of all time.  His intuitive vision and fiercely innovative direction has given rise to a new era of storytelling and has made a profound impact on future generations of filmmakers. Martin has given us a rich body of groundbreaking work to aspire to, and for this, we are honored to award him with the Visual Effects Society Lifetime Achievement Award.”

Martin Scorsese has directed critically acclaimed, award-winning films including Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed (Academy Award for Best Director and Best Picture), Shutter Island and Hugo (Golden Globe for Best Director).

Scorsese has also directed numerous documentaries, including Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, Elia Kazan: A Letter to Elia and the classic The Last Waltz about The Band’s final concert. His George Harrison: Living in the Material World received Emmy Awards for Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming and Outstanding Nonfiction Special.

In 2010, Scorsese executive produced the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, winning an Emmy and DGA awards for directing the pilot episode. In 2014, he co-directed The 50 Year Argument with his long-time documentary editor David Tedeschi.

This September, Scorsese’s film, The Irishman, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, will make its world premiere at the New York Film Festival and will have a theatrical release starting November 1 in New York and Los Angeles before arriving on Netflix on November 27.

Scorsese is the founder and chair of The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and protection of motion picture history.

Previous winners of the VES Lifetime Achievement Award have included George Lucas; Robert Zemeckis; Dennis Muren, VES; Steven Spielberg; Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall; James Cameron; Ray Harryhausen; Stan Lee; Richard Edlund, VES; John Dykstra; Sir Ridley Scott; Ken Ralston; Jon Favreau and Chris Meledandri.ri

Rob Legato to receive HPA’s Lifetime Achievement Award 

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The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) will honor renowned visual effects supervisor and creative Robert Legato with its Lifetime Achievement Award at the HPA Awards at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on November 21. Now in its 14th year, the HPA Awards recognize creative artistry, innovation and engineering excellence in the media content industry. The Lifetime Achievement Award honors the recipients’ dedication to the betterment of the industry.

Legato is an iconic figure in the visual effects industry with multiple Oscar, BAFTA and Visual Effects Society nominations and awards to his credit. He is a multi-hyphenate on many of his projects, serving as visual effects supervisor, VFX director of photography and second unit director. From his work with studios and directors and in his roles at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Digital Domain, he has developed a variety of digital workflows.

He has enjoyed collaborations with leading directors including James Cameron, Jon Favreau, Martin Scorsese and Robert Zemeckis. Legato’s career in VFX began in television at Paramount Pictures, where he supervised visual effects on two Star Trek series, which earned him two Emmy awards. He left Paramount to join the newly formed Digital Domain where he worked with founders James Cameron, Stan Winston and Scott Ross. He remained at Digital Domain until he segued to Sony Imageworks.

Legato began his feature VFX career on Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire. He then served as VFX supervisor and DP for the VFX unit on Ron Howard’s Apollo 13, which earned him his first Academy Award nomination, and a win at the BAFTAs. He worked with James Cameron on Titanic, earning him his first Academy Award. Legato continued to work with Cameron, conceiving and creating the virtual cinematography pipeline for Cameron’s visionary Avatar.

Legato has also enjoyed a long collaboration with Martin Scorsese that began with his consultation on Kundun and continued with the multi-award winning film The Aviator, on which he served as co-second unit director/cameraman and VFX supervisor. Legato’s work on The Aviator won him three VES awards. He returned to work with the director on the Oscar Best Picture winner The Departed as the 2nd unit director/cameraman and VFX supervisor.  Legato and Scorsese collaborated once again on Shutter Island, on which he was both VFX supervisor and 2nd unit director/cameraman. He continued on to Scorsese’s 3D film Hugo, which was nominated for 11 Oscars and 11 BAFTAs, including Best Picture and Best Visual Effects. Legato won his second Oscar for Hugo as well as three VES Society Awards. His collaboration with Scorsese continued with The Wolf of Wall Street as well as with non-theatrical and advertising projects such as the Clio award-winning Freixenet: The Key to Reserva, a 10-minute commercial project, and the Rolling Stones feature documentary, Shine a Light.

Legato worked with director Jon Favreau on Disney’s The Jungle Book (second unit director/cinematographer and VFX supervisor) for which he received his third Academy Award, a British Academy Award, five VES Awards, an HPA Award and the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Visual Effects for 2016. His latest film with Favreau is Disney’s The Lion King, which surpassed $1 billion in box office after fewer than three weeks in theaters.

Legato’s extensive credits include serving as VFX supervisor on Chris Columbus’ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, as well as on two Robert Zemeckis films, What Lies Beneath and Cast Away. He was senior VFX supervisor on Michael Bay’s Bad Boys II, which was nominated for a VES Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects, and for Digital Domain he worked on Bay’s Armageddon.

Legato is a member of ASC, BAFTA, DGA, AMPAS, VES, and the Local 600 and Local 700 unions.

Chatting with Scorsese’s go-to editor Thelma Schoonmaker

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By Iain Blair

Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorsese go together like Lennon and McCartney, or Ben and Jerry. It’s hard to imagine one without the other.

Simply put, Schoonmaker has been Martin Scorsese’s go-to editor and key collaborator over the course of 23 films and half a century, winning Oscars for Raging Bull, The Aviator and The Departed. Now 77, she also recently received a career achievement award at the American Cinema Editors’ 67th Eddie Awards.

She cut Scorsese’s first feature, Who’s that Knocking at My Door, and since Raging Bull has worked on all of his feature films, including such classics as The King of Comedy, After Hours, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ, New York Stories, GoodFellas (which earned her another Oscar nomination), Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence, Casino, Kundun, Gangs of New York (another Oscar nomination), Shutter Island, Hugo (another Oscar nomination) and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Their most recent collaboration was Silence, Scorsese’s underrated and powerful epic, which is now available via Blu-ray, DVD and On Demand from Paramount Home Media Distribution.

A 28-year passion project that reinforces Scorsese’s place in the pantheon of great directors, Silence tells the story of two Christian missionaries (Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield) who travel to Japan in search of their missing mentor (Liam Neeson) at a time when Christianity was outlawed. When they are captured and imprisoned, both men are plunged into an odyssey that will test their faith, challenge their sanity and, perhaps, risk their very lives

I recently talked with Schoonmaker about cutting Silence, working with Scorsese, and their long and storied collaboration.

Silence must have been very challenging to cut as it’s very long and could easily have ended up being a bit slow and boring.
(Laughs) You’re right! It was one of the things we were most concerned about from the start, as it’s a very meditative film. It’s nothing like his last films, Hugo and Wolf of Wall Street, and it couldn’t be more different.

Wolf had all the crazy stuff and the wild humor and improvisation, but with Silence Marty wanted to make an entirely different movie from the way most movies are made today. So that was a very brave commitment, I think, and it was difficult to find the right balance and the right pace. We experimented a great deal with just how slow it could be, without losing the audience.

Even the film’s opening scene was a major challenge. It’s very slow and sets the tone before the film even starts, with just the cicadas on the soundtrack. It tells you, slow down from our crazy lives, just feel what’s going on and engage with it. The minimal score is all part of that. It’s not telling the audience what to think, as scores usually do. He wanted the audience to decide what they feel and think, and he was adamant about starting the film off like that, which was also brave.

It feels far closer to The Age of Innocence in terms of its pacing than his more recent films.
Yes, and that was definitely a big part of its appeal for him, as it’s set in another country and also another century, so Marty wanted the film to be very meditative, and the pace of it had to reflect all that. Along with that, he was able to examine his religious concerns and interests, which he couldn’t do so much in other films. They were always there, but here they’re up front.

Did you stay in New York cutting while he shot in Taiwan, or did you visit the set?
I was in Taipei while they shot, working on the dailies, but I didn’t go on set as the locations they used were very arduous — up these steep mountains — and it took two hours just to get up there. There was bad weather and mud, wind, mosquitoes and snakes. Really, I just didn’t have the time to go on set, so I never got to see the great beauty of Taiwan, since I was back in Taipei in my editing room.

I do go on sets sometimes, and I love to visit and watch Marty work with the actors, and it’s always fun to be on the set, but as an editor, I also want to be unbiased when I sit down and watch footage. I don’t want to have my eye prejudiced by what I see on set and how difficult it might be to get a particular shot. That has nothing at all to do with my job.

How long did it take to edit?
Almost a year, but we had a couple of interruptions. Marty had to finish up his show for HBO, Vinyl, and then there was a family illness. But I love having that much time. Most editors simply don’t get to live with a film that long, and you really have to in order to understand it and understand what it’s saying to you. You’re editing the work of 250 people, and you have to respect that. You shouldn’t have to rush it.

Last time we talked, you were using Lightworks to edit. Do you use Avid now?
No, I still use Lightworks, and I still prefer it. It’s what I was trained on during the early days of digital editing, and it’s used a lot in Europe. Our first digital film was Casino, and back then Lightworks sent a computer expert to train me, and I’ve loved it ever since because it has a controller that is like the old flatbed editing machines and I love that — you can customize it very easily. It also has this button that allows me to throw stuff out of sync and experiment more, and that’s not available on Avid. So I’ve been editing on Lightworks ever since Casino.

When I last interviewed Marty, he told me that editing and post are his favorite parts of filmmaking. When you both sit down to edit it must be like having two editors in the room rather than a director and his editor?
It’s exactly like that. I do the first cut, but then once he comes in after the shoot we make every decision together. He’s a brilliant editor, and he taught me everything I know about editing— I knew nothing when we started together. He also thinks like an editor, unlike many directors. When he’s writing and then shooting, he’s always thinking about how it’ll cut together. Some directors shoot a lot of stuff, but does it cut together? Marty knows all that and what coverage he needs. He’s a genius, and such a knowledgeable person to be around every day.

You’ve been Marty’s editor since his very first film, back in 1967 — a 50-year collaboration. What’s the secret?
I think it’s that we’re true collaborators. He’s such an editing director, and we know each other so well by now, but it’s always fresh and interesting. There are no ego battles. Every film’s different, with different challenges, and he’s always curious, always learning, always open to new experiences. I feel very fortunate.

What’s next?
Right now I’m working on the diaries of my husband, (famed British director) Michael Powell (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus), and then Marty and I will start The Irishman later in the summer. It’s all about elderly gangsters, with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. It’s exciting.

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.

Arrival, La La Land among winners at 67th ACE Eddies

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The ACE Eddies, the awards celebrating the best in editing — and voted on by editors themselves — took place last week at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Arrival (edited by Joe Walker, ACE) won Best Edited Feature Film (Dramatic) and La La Land (edited by Tom Cross, ACE) won Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy). During the 67th Annual ACE Eddie Awards, trophies were handed out recognizing the best editing of 2016 in 10 categories of film, television and documentaries.

ACE President Stephen Rivkin, ACE, presided over the evening’s festivities with actress Rachel Bloom (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) serving as the evening’s host.

Director/producer J.J. Abrams received the organization’s prestigious ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year honor, which was presented to him by friend and collaborator Jeff Garlin. Abrams joins an impressive list of filmmakers who have received ACE’s highest honor, including Norman Jewison, Nancy Meyers, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Robert Zemeckis, Alexander Payne, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Frank Marshall and Richard Donner, among others.

Janet Ashikaga, ACE, and Thelma Schoonmaker, ACE, were presented with Career Achievement awards by Thomas Schlamme and Martin Scorsese, respectively. Their work was highlighted with clip reels exhibiting their tremendous contributions to film and television throughout their careers.

Other presenters at the ACE Eddie Awards included Moonlight star Trevante Rhodes, Fences stars Mykelti Williamson and Saniyya Sidney, This Is Us actress Chrissy Metz and actor Tim Matheson.

Arrival editor Joe Walker, ACE

A full list of winners follows:


BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (DRAMATIC):

Arrival
Joe Walker, ACE


BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (COMEDY):
La La Land
Tom Cross, ACE

BEST EDITED ANIMATED FEATURE FILM:
Zootopia
Fabienne Rawley & Jeremy Milton

BEST EDITED DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE):
O.J.: Made in America
Bret Granato, Maya Mumma & Ben Sozanski

BEST EDITED DOCUMENTARY (TELEVISION):
Everything Is Copy – Nora Ephron: Scripted & Unscripted
Bob Eisenhardt, ACE

Veep editor Steven Rasch, ACE.

BEST EDITED HALF-HOUR SERIES FOR TELEVISION:
Veep: “Morning After”
Steven Rasch, ACE

BEST EDITED ONE-HOUR SERIES FOR COMMERCIAL TELEVISION:
This Is Us: “Pilot”
David L. Bertman, ACE

BEST EDITED ONE-HOUR SERIES FOR NON-COMMERCIAL TELEVISION:
Game of Thrones: “Battle of the Bastards”
Tim Porter, ACE

BEST EDITED MINISERIES OR MOTION PICTURE FOR TELEVISION:
All the Way
Carol Littleton, ACE

BEST EDITED NON-SCRIPTED SERIES:
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown: “Senegal”
Mustafa Bhagat

Main Image: La La Land editor Tom Cross, ACE

The A-List: Bleed for This director Ben Younger

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By Iain Blair

Writer/director Ben Younger had been MIA for quite a while. Back in 2000 he made a splash with his acclaimed feature debut, Boiler Room. This tense crime drama, which starred Ben Affleck and Vin Diesel, was set in the high stakes, testosterone-fueled — and sometimes illegal — world of brokerage firms and investment banking.

Five years later, he directed his second film, the Meryl Streep/Uma Thurman romantic dramedy Prime, which grossed $67 million worldwide and cemented his reputation as someone to watch. Then Younger disappeared from sight.

Director Ben Younger and writer Iain Blair.

Over a decade later, he’s back with his third film, Bleed for This, a super-intense boxing drama and the true comeback story of Vinny Pazienza, the “Pazmanian Devil” (Miles Teller), whose boxing career should have ended when a terrible head-on car smash left him with a badly broken neck and few chances of ever walking again, let alone fighting in the ring. Yet he refused to throw in the towel and staged the sport’s most unlikely comeback so he could defend his middleweight world championship.

I spoke with Younger about his disappearance from the industry, making this film and his love-hate relationship with post.

It’s been 11 years since your last film. What the hell happened?
It’s been even longer — 12 years (laughs). I wanted to make this motorcycle racing film, Isle of Man, back in ’07, but no one would make it. I got a little disenchanted, a little upset. I tried to get another movie made, couldn’t get that off the ground either. I stepped back and decided to take five, six years off and go the experiential route instead.

I learned to fly, I became a cook in Costa Rica, went surfing and raced motorbikes for a year professionally. I did all the things my dad never got a chance to do because he died so young. He hated his job, was miserable, and I didn’t want to do that.

I heard you’re not even a boxing fan, so why make this film?
It’s not a boxing film like the usual ones. It’s this incredible comeback story about this guy who had a passion for boxing. I don’t feel that passionate about anything in my life where I would risk paralysis to do it, like he did. So by that measure, it didn’t matter what Vinny did. I would have told the same story whatever his profession. That’s what drew me in.

What did you hope for the film?
Because it’s set in the world of boxing, you can’t avoid comparisons with other films in the genre, so it was important not to fall into cliché and the tired old tropes of every boxing movie. I just wanted to differentiate myself. There’s a lot of humor, which is always a big part of my movies, and I like humor in very dramatic settings.

Martin Scorsese executive produced. Did you ask him for any advice, considering he made Raging Bull?
No, and he didn’t really offer any. He got involved after he showed Boiler Room to his Wolf of Wall Street crew, and then he called me to meet up after reading this script. I was in Costa Rica, cooking, and he said, ‘You’ve got to get back here. I’m going to help you make this movie.’ And he did.

What did Miles Teller bring to the role?
Preparation. He’s a monster. Eight months of training and he knew his boxing. We shot for just 24 days, on a $6 million budget — not enough time or money — so I knew I couldn’t be on set worrying about the boxing itself, or we’d have been in big trouble. So he took all that off the table for me.

Do you like the post process?
I have a love-hate relationship with it. Every movie, inarguably, gets made in post. There’s no question. Same with my other two films. This was written in post, re-imagined in post, reconfigured in post. But there’s something I hate about sitting in a dark room for 12 hours a day. It fucking kills me. It’s a very depressing work environment. You have to do it, but it doesn’t mean you have to like it.

You edited the film with Zac Stuart-Pontier who cut Martha Marcy May Marlene and won two Emmys for HBO’s The Jinx. Tell us about that relationship and how it worked.
He was a PA on Prime, his first job in the industry. He was at NYU and took a semester off to work on the movie, and then his career took off. He wasn’t on set at all as he was still on The Jinx, so we had an assistant editor log it all and he started after the shoot.

We did it all at Harbor Post — everything. It took a good six months. The big problem was I made a mistake in the script, putting the car crash in the middle, and it didn’t work. So we had to ruthlessly cut the first half down so it happened more like a first act, and we lost a lot of stuff. It was a shock to me, but now I’m like, ‘What were you thinking?’

We did some test screenings, and people loved watching all the gambling, the women and so on, but then after the crash scene, retroactively they hated it. They were like, ‘Why take us on the hour-long detour?’ Because of The Jinx, Zac was very used to working in a docu-drama environment, and we had all this great archival footage of Vinny, and I thought maybe we would use some of it at the end credits. But we ended up putting it in the middle of the movie. We break the fourth wall so many times in the editing, and no one seems to mind. We cut from Vinny to Miles to Vinny, and it just works.

Can you talk about the importance of music and sound in the film?
It’s over half the film, and when you don’t have the budget it’s the cheapest thing you can do to radically improve your film. A good score and mix can improve it by 25 percent, easily.

Where did you mix the sound?
All at Harbor on their huge new Atmos stage, but my supervising sound editor Coll Anderson has his own studio in Woodstock where we did the pre-mixes.

This is obviously not a VFX-driven film, but I’m assuming there was some in the crash scene?
And crowd replacement stuff at the fights, some compositing. It was all done by Eyeball in LA. They did a great job on the crash, and they’d never done that sort of thing before.

How important was the DI on this, and where did you do it?
Hugely important. I worked closely with DP Larkin Seiple and colorist Andrew Francis at Sixteen19 in New York, who has an amazing eye. I think I was able to give them a fresh set of eyes after they had been at it for 10 hours. I would take a look and ask, ‘Why is this so blue? Why is this so warm?’ And they would go, ‘You’re right,’ and adjust it a little.

Did it turn out how you originally envisioned it?
From a macro perspective, definitely. It was more the little things — the crash, the archival footage — that changed.

What’s next?
No more long breaks. I’m making Isle of Man next year. It’s funded and happening.

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.

Rockin’ music supervision for HBO’s ‘Vinyl’

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By Jennifer Walden

Otis Redding, The Velvet Underground, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Temptations, Janis Joplin, The Doors… the list of music featured on the HBO series Vinyl would make any music supervisor drool, and that’s just a small sample of the artists whose music has been featured so far. There are still four more episodes to go this season.

As you can imagine, big-name artists come with a big price tag. “When you have this many songs from the golden era of rock ‘n’ roll, you’re going to spend some real money. It’s such a music-driven enterprise that you have to go into it with your eyes open,” says music supervisor Randall Poster. He and co-music supervisor Meghan Currier, at NYC’s Search Party Music, had the job of curating and creating Vinyl’s epic soundtrack.

Randall Poster

Randall Poster

Poster has over 100 feature film credits, including Carol, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Wolf of Wall Street, Insurgent and Divergent, Boyhood, I’m Not There (a Bob Dylan biopic) and Velvet Goldmine to name just a few. He’s also done a bit of series work too, including HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, where he worked with series creator Terence Winter and executive producer Martin Scorsese — two of the masterminds behind Vinyl. Having already collaborated with Winter and Scorsese on two soundtrack driven series, there’s a lot of trust in their relationship.

“It’s a collaborative medium,” notes Poster. “We all throw in ideas and we all have certain passions. Marty is the master of using songs in movies. I think we’ve developed a pretty strong working relationship and process.”

In 2012, Poster won a Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media for Boardwalk Empire. It wouldn’t be surprising if Vinyl’s soundtrack earns the same recognition.

Vinyl tells the story of Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale), owner of the faltering music label American Century, which is struggling to find its footing on the shifting tectonic plates of musical genres in the early ‘70s. One new genre to rise out of the rubble of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest era is proto-punk, which Finestra feels can re-energize the rock scene. “You are on the verge of punk rock, on the verge of disco, the elements of hip-hop are just beginning to formulate,” explains Poster. “This whole season you are on the verge of these musical revolutions. Also, part of the show’s music is borne out of Richie Finestra’s musical foundations, which he is trying to somehow reconnect with.”

There is a wealth of opportunity for music — interstitials, bands on-screen, diegetic music coming from cassette players, turntables and radios. There’s also music that underscores the drama or helps to reinforce story points. It’s no wonder that there are 20–30 tracks in every episode. According to Poster, the pilot alone had around 60 tracks. “One thing that is really unique about Vinyl is the volume of music, the amount of it.”

Licensing
Some tracks from the aforementioned top-shelf artists were licensed with help from Warner Bros. Records and Atlantic Records, with both labels offering up their catalogs to Poster and Currier. “They were happy to make their artists and most of their catalog available to us,” says Poster.

But those two major labels were by no means the extent of Poster’s and Currier’s reach. Ultimately, if there was a track they wanted to use in the show, regardless of the label, they went for it. “Everyone wanted to do this soundtrack and they really were passionate about it. People saw the ambition of the enterprise and responded to it.”

The hardest part about licensing all the big-name songs — like the hit songs for the lipsync interstitials including Janis Joplin (played by Catherine Stephen) performing “Cry Baby” in Episode 4 — was just tracking down who owned the rights to them. “For the lipsync sequences, we talked to the series writers and we’d land on a song. Then we’d go and work out all the licensing details,” explains Poster.

On-Screen Performers
The real challenge for music on the show lies in Vinyl’s substantial use of on-camera music. Several primary characters are musicians performing original songs, like the fictional punk band the Nasty Bits, led by Kip Stevens (played by Mick Jagger’s son, James Jagger), and the funk-rock band led by Hannibal (played by Daniel J. Watts). Then there are faux versions of popular bands playing re-recorded versions of their hits, such as “Somethin’ Else” performed on-screen by a faux Led Zeppelin in Episode 3, or “Personality Crisis” performed on-screen by a mocked-up New York Dolls at the end of Episode 1. “In terms of the workflow and getting involved in the pre-production process, those were the things that you had to deal with first — landing on repertoire, and casting and rehearsing actors. That was the initial focus,” reports Poster.

They needed to find real musicians to play in the bands on-screen, so Currier took the lead in casting the on-screen musicians that weren’t main characters and didn’t have speaking lines. “She was really chasing people down on the subway, asking them if they played music. We needed to cast people that had that period look, or resembled artists in a particular band. There were so many on-screen acts that we needed to cover. For example, Hannibal’s band in Episode 4 has 12 people in it. We had to find them and then rehearse them, to make sure it all worked correctly,” says Poster.

The re-recorded hits and original tunes involved collaborations with music industry heavy-hitters, like Trey Songz, Dan Auerbach, Elvis Costello, David Johansen (New York Dolls) and Charli XCX. “When we wanted to have Trey Songz, an Atlantic artist, voice one of the characters on the show, and we wanted The Arcs, which is a Dan Auerbach’s (The Black Keys) side project, Atlantic Records helped us in terms of accessing these artists,” explains Poster. “Kevin Weaver, who is the point person there at Atlantic Records, was just a business dynamo. He really helped us cut through a lot of red tape.”

Poster tapped Lee Ranaldo, co-founder of Sonic Youth, to produce the Nasty Bits punk tracks. According to Pitchfork, their tune list includes songs salvaged from the nearly forgotten ‘70s punk band Jack Ruby, lending to the era-authentic punk vibe in Vinyl.

To create the band’s backing tracks for James Jagger’s vocals, Ranaldo chose Yo La Tengo’s bassist James McNew, Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, avant-garde guitarist Alan Licht and guitarist Don Fleming of the ‘80s art-punk band Velvet Monkeys. “We really had a great collection of artists who worked with us, and we relied on them for insight and precision,” says Poster. “I was really excited to do new music with John Doe (from the late 1970s punk band called X). Elvis Costello — one of my rock ‘n’ roll gods, who we worked with on Boardwalk Empire a few times, came in and sang for us. Lenny Kaye, from Patti Smith Group, is someone we have worked with before. He’s a good resource. It’s great to channel the musical energies of some of our rock ‘n’ roll heroes. Musicians are often the best people to talk to about things that they were responding to from an era.”

If you love all the blues, rock ‘n’ roll, punk, funk, disco and ‘70s pop featured in the series, you can purchase the soundtrack “Vinyl: Music From the HBO Original Series — Volume 1” released by Atlantic Records, as a physical CD, digital download or (appropriately) as a vinyl LP. Each week there is also a new five-song digital soundtrack featuring music from that Sunday’s upcoming episode. And as the season wraps up, a “Volume 2” soundtrack will also be available. When the Vinyl digital soundtracks become available, you can download them via iTunes and Google Play, with streaming available on Spotify.

Jennifer Walden is a writer and audio engineer based in New Jersey.