Exposure: John Cooper
With this, his 22nd film festival, no one (save for founder Robert Redford) has been more intrinsically bound to Sundance than John Cooper. His tenure actually pre-dates Sex, Lies and Videotape, often cited as the turning point in Sundance’s now two-decade reign as the world’s best indie festival. Cooper (employees and volunteers rarely use his first name) says his love affair with Park City was written in the stars. “I actually stumbled” upon Sundance during a layover flight in Utah,” he remembers. “I was on my way back to New York from San Francisco and met someone in a bar who asked if I’d like to volunteer at the festival. I was involved in theater at the time and the whole do-it-yourself approach of independent film really spoke to me.” Read more
Exposure: Steven Zaillian
It’s not like screenwriter Steven Zaillian hasn’t plumbed the darkness in the human heart before he adapted David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, based on the first novel in Steig Larsson’s worldwide bestselling trilogy, Millennium. Zaillian’s sublime script for Schindler’s List, based on Thomas Keneally’s book, found hope in the bleakest of all human experiences, and won an Academy Award. And, over the last quarter century, Zaillian has been responsible for some of the most heart wrenching moments in cinema, most often adaptations of literary works like 1985’s The Falcon and the Snowman all the way up to this year’s Moneyball (written in conjunction with Aaron Sorkin). Novels and non-fiction have been fertile ground for Zaillian, who has also left his computer to direct projects he’s written, including Searching for Bobby Fisher, A Civil Action (which received a Writers Guild Award nomination), and All the King’s Men. Zaillian, who was also an executive producer on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, has awards from the WGA, BAFTA, and the Humanitas Prize, to sit alongside his Oscar. Chris Wolski caught up with Hollywood’s most respected scribe via email to talk about punk hackers, political evildoers, and finding a kindred spirit in Conrad Hall, ASC. Read more
Exposure: Clint Eastwood
Over the course of winning four Oscars, director/producer/actor Clint Eastwood has built a wide-ranging resume – everything from comedies, thrillers and those famously iconic Westerns, to complex and sophisticated adult dramas. A consummate craftsman, whose career stretches all the way back to the studio contract system, Eastwood appears at ease in any genre he chooses. That’s never been more true than recent non-fiction projects like Invictus, Letters from Iwo Jima, Flags of our Fathers, and his newest, J. Edgar, a biopic about the FBI’s powerful long-standing chief. An “actor’s director,” who always puts his cast first, Eastwood is also famously efficient with schedules and budgets. Many say his ease behind the camera stems from the confidence he places in the collaborators he’s brought along over decades. Or as cinematographer Tom Stern, ASC (now on his seventh Eastwood project) describes the many creative partnerships: “a jazz quintet,” in that Eastwood is the leader, but gives everyone the freedom to contribute with their own particular talents. How fitting that the man who gave us Bird approaches filmmaking as one inspired piece of improvisation, where every single person on the set has a key note to play. Read more
Exposure: Tommy Schlamme
Elephants never forget, and, apparently, the same can be said for the elite tier of TV producer/directors. Case in point is Tommy Schlamme, who while visiting New York City as a youngster, was struck by the 40-foot Kodak Colorama decorating Grand Central Station. Several decades later, and at the top tier of network show runners Schlamme and cinematographer John Lindley, ASC, were both seduced by those same images in Grand Central, using the Kodak Colorama as a reference point to help establish the look for the new 1960’s period series Pan Am, Schlamme was directing. Read more
Exposure: J.J. Abrams
In the late 1970s, J.J. Abrams and his friend, Matt Reeves, were novice Super 8 filmmakers in Los Angeles when they received a call from Steven Spielberg’s office. The director had seen a photo of the boys in an article in the Los Angeles Times about young people and their hobbies, which happened to be the filmmaker’s passion when he was a kid, so he asked if they wouldn’t mind cleaning up some of his own boyhood films. So it was, at the age of 13, that J.J. Abrams first crossed paths with Steven Spielberg. Read more
Exposure: Jacqueline West
Nominated for costume design Oscars for her work on Quills and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Jacqueline West came to her love of fashion from her earliest days in San Francisco, where she grew up with a mannequin in her bedroom and Vogue magazines on the coffee table because her mother was a fashion designer. West followed her mother’s footsteps into fashion design, transitioning only to costumes when director Philip Kaufman asked her to be a creative consultant on Henry & June. West then later served as costume designer for Kaufman’s subsequent films, Rising Sun and Quills. She says she particularly loves the research end of her job – unearthing original sources to help capture the rich details required of a period piece, as West did for this month’s cover story, Water For Elephants. Ted Elrick talked to West about her 1930s-era designs for the film and found out that mom still knows best. “I continue to follow my mother’s advice,” West relayed. “Find the fabric first. The fabric dictates the design.” Read more
Exposure: Pierre “Pete” Routhier
Suffering from edge mismatch or partial reverse stereo? Seeing indications of hyperconvergence or hyperdivergence? If so, you’ve experienced one or more of the 15 key issues – some taking place during shooting, others occurring in post – that can be encountered during the making of a 3D stereoscopic film. Technicolor’s Pierre “Pete” Routhier, vice president, 3D product strategy and development, has spent the last decade dealing with these issues and devising appropriate strategies to address them. Formerly a United Technologies aerospace engineer, Routhier had gone on to develop 3D encoding solutions while at SENSIO®, where he also worked to help facilitate production of various 3D independent features, as well as training VFX vendors on issues associated with the process. As director of stereoscopy at Create3, he provided rigs for live-action shooting [X Games 3D: The Movie]. His current involvement at Technicolor encompasses the company’s conversion efforts as well as their 3D Certification Program, which could prove to be as significant for stereoscopic as THX® Certification was for sound in film. Kevin H. Martin caught up with Routhier not long after the stereo veteran debuted his 15-point 3D workflow presentation (part of the company’s 3D Certification Process) at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Read more
Exposure: Gregory L. McMurry, ASC
Visual effects supervisor Greg McMurry’s career actually began some 30 years ago, trying to salvage an epic case of VFX mis-management on 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In the employ of effects maestro Douglas Trumbull, McMurry helped to devise and implement COMPSY, the stretch-limo-cum-Humvee of animation stands, through which that film’s V’Ger cloud was realized with dozens of motion-control passes. His association with Trumbull continued through Blade Runner and Brainstorm, the latter for which he created video imagery for on-set playback. In the years following, McMurry cofounded Video Image, generating scene-specific 24-frame video graphics for several films, including 2010,writer/director Peter Hyams’ sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Video Image evolved into VIFX (later Blue Sky|VIFX), a full-service visual effects vendor that was acquired by Rhythm & Hues in 1999. Over the past two decades, McMurry worked on three more Hyams projects, as well as James Cameron’s The Abyss, Tim Burton’s Batman Returns and a pair of John Woo films. A 2006 member of the ASC, McMurry most recently supervised visual effects for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra before tackling D. J. Caruso’s adaptation of the juvenile novel I Am Number Four. Kevin Martin talked to McMurry about his passion for epic moviemaking, and why great digital effects should never overwhelm storytelling. Read more
Exposure: Michel Gondry
French-born Michel Gondry started his career making music videos for his own band, Oui, Oui. When his work caught the eye of Finnish pop star Bjork, the pair’s collaboration jump-started the director’s unique and unparalleled efforts in the world of music advertising. When he moved into commercials, Gondry continued devising or adapting groundbreaking visuals. One example is the “bullet time” technique, best known from The Matrix, which Gondry perfected on a Smirnoff spot. His feature debut came in 2001 on Human Nature, and the follow-up was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, his second collaboration with writer Charlie Kaufman. That film, photographed by Ellen Kuras, ASC, also incorporated innovative camera techniques from the world of music videos. His other credits include The Science of Sleep, Be Kind Rewind and this month’s The Green Hornet. David Heuring talked with the iconoclastic French auteur to find out what first got him excited about filmmaking, and how he navigated his first voyage through the movie-by-committee approach that is the Hollywood studio system. Read more
Exposure: Darren Aronofsky
Darren Aronofsky is a confirmed New Yorker. Born in Brooklyn to parents who were both teachers, he was trained as a research biologist with The School for Field Studies at a ranch in Kenya and Prince William Sound, Alaska. When Aronofsky entered Harvard University in the late 1980s, it was to study anthropology, live action film and animation. His senior thesis film was a finalist in the Student Academy Awards, and that honor inspired further studies at the American Film Institute (AFI), where he earned an M.F.A. in directing. Aronofsky was honored with the prestigious Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Award at AFI, but perhaps even more importantly, it was where he met a kindred creative spirit in cinematographer Matthew Libatique, ASC. As young mavericks, the pair set out to forge a new path for independent filmmaking, beginning with Pi, which won the Directing Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay and the Gotham Open Palm Award. Aronofsky went on to make visionary narratives like Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain and his latest, Black Swan, all with Libatique behind the lens. In fact, The Wrestler (shot by Maryse Alberti) is the only film of Aronofsky’s not done with Libatique. Pauline Rogers talked to the director about the youthful film school exuberance he continues to bring to each project, and his 15-year dream of making Black Swan. Read more
