Tár Director Todd Field on
Production, VFX and Post

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.

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 working with visual effects.

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 AMC’s The Terror. The quality of his lighting on the actors’ faces was so true, which is impressive considering it’s all done onstage with a lot of 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. We went to colorist Tim Masick’s DI suite at Company 3 and looked at various lens tests, trying to figure that out before we began prepping and shooting in Berlin.

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