By Iain Blair
HBO’s timely and time-traveling hit show Watchmen offers viewers a different take on the 1987 DC Comics graphic novel series. From the mind of Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers, Lost), Watchmen was the most Emmy-nominated series this year, with 26 nods, including Outstanding Limited Series and Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special for director Nicole Kassell. While Kassell didn’t win, she was recognized for the episode, “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice.” In all, Watchmen took home 11 Emmys this year.
Nicole Kassell on set – Credit: Mark Hill/HBO
Kassell, who won a DGA Award this year for her work on the show’s pilot, also directed Episode 2 and Episode 8 and served as an executive producer on the series, which features a cast that includes Regina King, Jeremy Irons and Jean Smart.
Kassell has been one of the most in-demand female filmmakers, having directed numerous episodes of such critically praised series as Westworld, The Leftovers, The Killing and The Americans.
I recently talked with Kassell about directing the show, the challenges and why she loves post.
What were the big challenges of directing this show?
The huge scale. We had many different locations, big set pieces, a lot of action with the pilot’s flying machines and a firefight in a cattle field — and we even did a musical set in Tulsa in 1921. So there are so many different movies within the movie. Dealing with all the logistics of shooting this and the schedule was a huge challenge.
Where do you shoot, and how tough was it?
We shot in Atlanta and Wales in the UK, and it’s very tough because there’s a huge amount of material to cover on a tight schedule. It’s exhilarating but very hard. What I love about it is the huge scale and the level of production value we’re able to get.
What cameras and lenses do you shoot on?
We used the Alexa Mini, as it’s a very compact and nimble camera and we knew we could use it in unique places, as we wanted to use extreme close-ups as well as extreme wide shots, but also with a lot of foreground elements. It was perfect for all that, and we were able to shoot in places and from angles you normally can’t do.
For some elements of the story I wanted a very controlled frame with very little hand-held work. For lenses we used a combination — Cooke S5 primes in Atlanta, plus a couple of C series and T Series Panavision Anamorphics. We also used an ARRI Swing/Shift set and split diopters and Angenieux zooms. In Wales we used Panavision Primos. I tried to use the Cookes for most of the work.
Is it fair to say your visual plan and look is more comic book than cinematic in some places?
Yes, and I’m glad you said that because that approach to shot composition came largely as an homage to the original ‘80s comic and the style of its frames. Watchmen is a very unusual comic in that its frames are mostly vertical, and that gave us the idea for a frame within a frame and looking through things. So whenever possible we tried to find a vertical format. And then in terms of lighting, we went for a very noir look, with lots of contrast and shadow.
It’s also visually very ambitious and very cinematic. What were your influences there?
The film that was the most influential for me was The Conformist, Bertolucci’s political masterpiece. I wanted this to have the same kind of gritty realism. Children of Men and Amelie were also big influences, both visually and in the tone I wanted.
Where do you your post?
We do it all at Lantana in LA. We had full editing and post production suites set up there… just down from the writer’s room. But when I was editing, it was in Atlanta. I did it all remotely because there was just too much going on there with production for me to leave.
Do you like the post process?
I absolutely love it. It’s an essential part of the storytelling, and it’s where you craft your final version, and it exercises a very different part of your brain after preproduction and production. You go into this far more cerebral, quiet space, and I find it fascinating to put all the coverage together the way you planned it and shot it, and then to sit back and see how it actually wants to come together and how it organically shifts and evolves. Finding all that and taking it to picture lock is just so crucial in the storytelling, and then working on your sound design and score have huge impacts on all the visuals.
What were the big editing challenges?
I worked with a great editor, Henk Van Eeghen, on all three episodes, and the length is always a big challenge. We’re always working to keep an episode under an hour. That means not lingering, even though you love a scene or a pretty shot, and focusing on the pacing and rhythm and being as concise as possible. You have to keep the story moving forward, and you don’t have a lot of time — just five, seven days for the director’s cut, depending on the episode.
This show has a great score and great sound design. Can you talk about the importance of sound and music to you.
Both are so crucial to the storytelling and setting the mood and tone, especially in something like Episode 8, “A God Walks Into Abar,” which has so many locations and different sounds as it takes you from Saigon to New York and Antarctica and then back to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the big battle. We did all the sound at Technicolor Sound, and we had a great team on the show, including sound supervisor and designer Brad North and sound mixers Joe DeAngelis and Chris Carpenter.
What about the VFX? What was involved?
There was a ton of them, and we had a lot of different places doing them, including Rodeo, Raynault, Territory, Hybride, Buf, Jellyfish and Storm. That was a huge part of preproduction… figuring out what we’d do as VFX and what they’d look like. Then, or course, communicating all that very clearly with both the editor and our VFX supervisors Erik Henry and Nicholas Hurst, who was in Wales.
Erik was on the set in Atlanta the whole time for the pilot, but then the show got so big as it went to series and we were prepping and filming at the same time. He couldn’t be everywhere at once, so he brought on two alternating supervisors to help out with the prep and shoots, and then he ended up going back to LA so he could be super-hands-on with all the post and episodes coming down the pipeline. Finally, all the deliveries went through Damon and his cut.
Tell us about the DI and working with the colorist.
Our final colorist was Todd Bochner from Sim in LA. He also worked on The Leftovers with Damon. The DP, Greg Middleton, and Todd worked closely on the final color for the look that Greg and I had designed for the shoot, and it turned out great. (Read our interview with Middleton here.)
Nicole Kassell on set – Credit: Mark Hill/HBO
Will there be a second season?
That’s what everyone’s asking, right? But with the pandemic, there are no plans at the moment. It’s wait and see.
There’s a lot of talk about the lack of diversity in the entertainment business, Are things better in TV for women?
Yes, far better. Just look at the number of TV shows and episodes directed by women compared to the number of movies. It’s crazy, given how many superhero movies now star women, that so few women get the chance to direct them. It’s changing, but very slowly. There’s just far more opportunity in TV.
What advice would you give young women who’d like to direct?
Create or find material that you can also direct. That hasn’t changed from when I started. It takes enormous perseverance. If there’s anything else you might like to do, you probably should do it. For me, there was nothing else I wanted to do.
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.
