|
The Darkest Minds director
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
By Iain Blair
Jennifer Yuh Nelson has been an acclaimed — and highly bankable — director in animation for years, thanks to her work on the billion-dollar-grossing Kung Fu Panda franchise from DreamWorks.
Now she’s taken on her first live-action film with Fox’s The Darkest Minds. Adapted from the best-selling book by Alexandra Bracken, the first in a YA trilogy, the film stars Amandla Stenberg in the lead as Ruby, along with Harris Dickinson, Miya Cech and Skylan Brooks.
The Darkest Minds also features adults, including Mandy Moore and Bradley Whitford, but revolves around a group of teens who mysteriously develop powerful new abilities and are then declared a threat by the government and detained. It’s essentially a genre mash-up — a road movie with some sci-fi elements and lots of kinetic action. It was written by Chad Hodge, best known for his work as the creator and executive producer of TNT’s Good Behavior and Fox’s Wayward Pines.
Nelson’s creative team included DP Kramer Morgenthau (Terminator Genisys, Thor: The Dark World), editors Maryann Brandon (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and Dean Zimmerman (Stranger Things), and visual effects supervisor Björn Mayer (Oblivion). Fox-based 21 Laps’ (Arrival) Shawn Levy and Dan Levine produced.
I recently spoke with Nelson about making the film.
What sort of film did you set out to make?
To start off with, I wanted a great emotional core, and as this was based off a book, it already had that built in… even in early versions of the script. It had great characters with strong relationships, and I wanted to do some action stuff.
Any surprises making the move to a big live-action film, or were you pretty prepared in terms of prep thanks to your background in animation?
I was pretty prepared, and the prep’s essentially the same as in animation. But, of course, production is utterly different, along with the experience of being on location. I had a really great crew and a fantastic DP, which helped me a lot. The big difference is suddenly you have the luxury of coverage, which you don’t get in animation. There you need to know exactly what you want, as it’s so expensive to create. Being outside all day on location, and dealing with the elements and crew and cast all at once — that was a big learning curve, but I really loved it.
Read More >
|
|
 
|
