#i have such a specific vision of like... a version of that scene where Lloyd dies and is with the fsm in that floaty island dimension

[mimenoises456]

My unpopular opinion is I really do think garmadon should have died again after season 10

[tomhiddleslove]

How can a naked space seem so full? Feelings furnish the stage in the resplendently spare new production of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,” which opened on Thursday night at the Bernard Jacobs Theater, and they shimmer, bend and change color like light streaming through a prism.

Directed by Jamie Lloyd — and acted with surgical precision by Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox — this stripped-down revival of Pinter’s 1978 tale of a sexual triangle places its central characters under microscopic scrutiny, with no place to hide. Especially not from one another, as everybody is on everybody else’s mind, all the time. They are also all almost always fully visible to the audience.

This British version is the most merciless and empathic interpretation of this much performed work I’ve seen, and it keeps returning to my thoughts in piercing shards, like the remnants of a too-revealing dream. I had heard good things about this “Betrayal” when it debuted in London earlier this year, but I didn’t expect it to be one of those rare shows I seem destined to think about forever.

“Betrayal” was dismissed as lightweight by Pinter standards when it opened at the National Theater in London four decades ago, and hearing it described baldly, you can sort of understand why. The high concept pitch could be: “Love among the literati in London leads to disaster, when a publisher discovers his wife is having an affair with his best friend!”

True, the play had an unusual structure, with its reverse chronology. (It begins in 1977 and ends in 1968.) Early critics regarded this as an unnecessary and confusing gimmick. As for all that brittle, passion-concealing wit and straight-faced deception, wasn’t that the stuff of old-guard West End masters like Coward and Rattigan?

With subsequent productions and a first-rate film in 1983 — featuring Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley and Patricia Hodge — earlier naysayers began to perceive a creeping depth and delicacy in the work, which for me now ranks among Pinter’s finest. Curiously, despite three starry productions (the most recent led by Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz), “Betrayal” has never been done full justice on Broadway.

Until now.

Mr. Lloyd’s interpretation balances surface elegance with an aching profundity, so that “Betrayal” becomes less about the anguish of love than of life itself. Specifically, I mean life as lived among people whom we can never truly know. That includes those closest to us; it also includes our own, elusive selves.

The three central characters here are Robert (Mr. Hiddleston); Emma (Ms. Ashton), his wife, a gallerist; and Jerry (Mr. Cox), a literary agent who was the best man at their wedding. Though the majority of the scenes are written for two, Mr. Lloyd keeps all his main characters onstage throughout. (He has also taken the liberty of introducing a fifth, silent character, in addition to the Italian waiter, played with gusto by Eddie Arnold, who appears in the original text.)

That means that when Jerry and Emma are in the rented, out-of-the-way flat where they meet in the afternoons, Robert is present as well — silent, unreacting and at some distance from the others, but undeniably there.

The hoary saying about three being a crowd comes to mind. But then sexual betrayal is inevitably crowded, isn’t it? The absent figure in the triangle is always there as an obstructive phantom, so that no interactions are unconditionally between two people. To borrow from Michael Frayn, whose “Passion Play” is my other favorite 20th-century drama about infidelity, adultery adulterates.

Mr. Lloyd’s “Betrayal” makes us feel this premise all the more acutely, by offering no distractions from the wounded and wounding souls at it center. As designed by the ever-ingenious Soutra Gilmour, and lighted with whispering subtlety by Jon Clark, the set remains a sort of modernist blank slate, like an abandoned contemporary showroom — or, perhaps, laboratory. Nor do the cast members ever change their clothes.

This means the focus is unflinchingly on how these friends and lovers behave, and on the distance between them (wonderfully underscored by a slyly, slowly moving stage). What they say is often as trivial as the most basic small talk. In Pinter, the greatest dramatic weight lies in what’s unspoken, in the darkness of unsorted feelings.

The three principal performers here allow us uncommon access to that darkness. They each achieve a state of heightened emotional transparency. And what we see, in their faces and bodies, and feel — in the less easily described energy that reaches across the footlights — is a harsh and beautiful muddle.

Pinter, like Chekhov, understood that reactions never come singly (though the shrilly opinionated discourse on social media today might lead you to think otherwise). The word “ambivalence” doesn’t begin to cover the thoughts in play in the first scene, when Jerry and Emma uneasily meet in a pub, two years after their affair has ended.

Emma has initiated this encounter. But as played with breathtakingly clear confusion by Ms. Ashton, she can’t explain why she did so. She’s looking for something she misplaced once, or let time carry off, but you know she can’t put her finger on what it is.

As played by the excellent Mr. Cox (best known here as television’s “Daredevil”), Jerry is less palpably unmoored; he would seem to have a thicker skin. And this shifts the center of “Betrayal” to its portrait of a marriage and its corrosive secrets.

As slender and sharp as a paring knife in his dark navy clothing, Mr. Hiddleston’s lacerating Robert seems to live in a state of existential mourning. He can be wittily combative, most memorably in a brilliantly staged restaurant scene with Jerry.

But you’re always aware of the regrets, the uneasiness, the sorrow behind the unbending facade. The scene in a Venice hotel room when he ever so gently, confronts Emma with evidence of her infidelity is almost too painful to watch. What you are witnessing is the conclusive collapse of a marriage’s fragile and necessary structure of illusions.

As a marquee name of films and tabloids, Mr. Hiddleston is the obvious draw here. But it’s the relatively little-known Ms. Ashton (who is also a playwright) who is the breakout star. And her deeply sensitive performance elicits a feminist subtext in “Betrayal.”

Power is a governing dynamic in Pinter. And I’ve seen productions in which Emma, as the only female onstage, emerges as a crushable odd-woman out in a boy’s club society. It’s telling that in this production she is the only major character who doesn’t wear a jacket or, more surprisingly, shoes.

She reads as more vulnerable because of this, but also as more humane and more open to figuring out just what has happened. Emma wants so much — professionally, romantically, domestically. And she’s harrowed by the realization that nothing she thought she had has ever been solidly hers.

More than ever in this version, which features a melancholy soundscape by Ben and Max Ringham, “Betrayal” becomes an elegy about time and memory, in which nothing stays fixed or certain. There’s new resonance to the continuing references to a joyful moment when Jerry threw Emma and Robert’s little girl into the air at a family gathering.

It’s mentioned in the very first scene, when Emma and Jerry meet again. The problem is they can’t agree on where the event happened, in his kitchen or hers.

Ms. Ashton’s Emma tries to conceal how much this small discrepancy upsets her, but her eyes are brimming. She thought she’d always at least have this memory intact — a vision of everyone, together, happy for a moment. It turns out she was mistaken.

-

[ Link to the full article in source below. ]

[insanityclause]

How can a naked space seem so full? Feelings furnish the stage in the resplendently spare new production of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,” which opened on Thursday night at the Bernard Jacobs Theater, and they shimmer, bend and change color like light streaming through a prism.

Directed by Jamie Lloyd — and acted with surgical precision by Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox — this stripped-down revival of Pinter’s 1978 tale of a sexual triangle places its central characters under microscopic scrutiny, with no place to hide. Especially not from one another, as everybody is on everybody else’s mind, all the time. They are also all almost always fully visible to the audience.

This British version is the most merciless and empathic interpretation of this much performed work I’ve seen, and it keeps returning to my thoughts in piercing shards, like the remnants of a too-revealing dream. I had heard good things about this “Betrayal” when it debuted in London earlier this year, but I didn’t expect it to be one of those rare shows I seem destined to think about forever.

“Betrayal” was dismissed as lightweight by Pinter standards when it opened at the National Theater in London four decades ago, and hearing it described baldly, you can sort of understand why. The high concept pitch could be: “Love among the literati in London leads to disaster, when a publisher discovers his wife is having an affair with his best friend!”

True, the play had an unusual structure, with its reverse chronology. (It begins in 1977 and ends in 1968.) Early critics regarded this as an unnecessary and confusing gimmick. As for all that brittle, passion-concealing wit and straight-faced deception, wasn’t that the stuff of old-guard West End masters like Coward and Rattigan?

With subsequent productions and a first-rate film in 1983 — featuring Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley and Patricia Hodge — earlier naysayers began to perceive a creeping depth and delicacy in the work, which for me now ranks among Pinter’s finest. Curiously, despite three starry productions (the most recent led by Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz), “Betrayal” has never been done full justice on Broadway.

Until now.

Mr. Lloyd’s interpretation balances surface elegance with an aching profundity, so that “Betrayal” becomes less about the anguish of love than of life itself. Specifically, I mean life as lived among people whom we can never truly know. That includes those closest to us; it also includes our own, elusive selves.

The three central characters here are Robert (Mr. Hiddleston); Emma (Ms. Ashton), his wife, a gallerist; and Jerry (Mr. Cox), a literary agent who was the best man at their wedding. Though the majority of the scenes are written for two, Mr. Lloyd keeps all his main characters onstage throughout. (He has also taken the liberty of introducing a fifth, silent character, in addition to the Italian waiter, played with gusto by Eddie Arnold, who appears in the original text.)

That means that when Jerry and Emma are in the rented, out-of-the-way flat where they meet in the afternoons, Robert is present as well — silent, unreacting and at some distance from the others, but undeniably there.

The hoary saying about three being a crowd comes to mind. But then sexual betrayal is inevitably crowded, isn’t it? The absent figure in the triangle is always there as an obstructive phantom, so that no interactions are unconditionally between two people. To borrow from Michael Frayn, whose “Passion Play” is my other favorite 20th-century drama about infidelity, adultery adulterates.

Mr. Lloyd’s “Betrayal” makes us feel this premise all the more acutely, by offering no distractions from the wounded and wounding souls at it center. As designed by the ever-ingenious Soutra Gilmour, and lighted with whispering subtlety by Jon Clark, the set remains a sort of modernist blank slate, like an abandoned contemporary showroom — or, perhaps, laboratory. Nor do the cast members ever change their clothes.

This means the focus is unflinchingly on how these friends and lovers behave, and on the distance between them (wonderfully underscored by a slyly, slowly moving stage). What they say is often as trivial as the most basic small talk. In Pinter, the greatest dramatic weight lies in what’s unspoken, in the darkness of unsorted feelings.

The three principal performers here allow us uncommon access to that darkness. They each achieve a state of heightened emotional transparency. And what we see, in their faces and bodies, and feel — in the less easily described energy that reaches across the footlights — is a harsh and beautiful muddle.

Pinter, like Chekhov, understood that reactions never come singly (though the shrilly opinionated discourse on social media today might lead you to think otherwise). The word “ambivalence” doesn’t begin to cover the thoughts in play in the first scene, when Jerry and Emma uneasily meet in a pub, two years after their affair has ended.

Emma has initiated this encounter. But as played with breathtakingly clear confusion by Ms. Ashton, she can’t explain why she did so. She’s looking for something she misplaced once, or let time carry off, but you know she can’t put her finger on what it is.

As played by the excellent Mr. Cox (best known here as television’s “Daredevil”), Jerry is less palpably unmoored; he would seem to have a thicker skin. And this shifts the center of “Betrayal” to its portrait of a marriage and its corrosive secrets.

As slender and sharp as a paring knife in his dark navy clothing, Mr. Hiddleston’s lacerating Robert seems to live in a state of existential mourning. He can be wittily combative, most memorably in a brilliantly staged restaurant scene with Jerry.

But you’re always aware of the regrets, the uneasiness, the sorrow behind the unbending facade. The scene in a Venice hotel room when he ever so gently, confronts Emma with evidence of her infidelity is almost too painful to watch. What you are witnessing is the conclusive collapse of a marriage’s fragile and necessary structure of illusions.

As a marquee name of films and tabloids, Mr. Hiddleston is the obvious draw here. But it’s the relatively little-known Ms. Ashton (who is also a playwright) who is the breakout star. And her deeply sensitive performance elicits a feminist subtext in “Betrayal.”

Power is a governing dynamic in Pinter. And I’ve seen productions in which Emma, as the only female onstage, emerges as a crushable odd-woman out in a boy’s club society. It’s telling that in this production she is the only major character who doesn’t wear a jacket or, more surprisingly, shoes.

She reads as more vulnerable because of this, but also as more humane and more open to figuring out just what has happened. Emma wants so much — professionally, romantically, domestically. And she’s harrowed by the realization that nothing she thought she had has ever been solidly hers.

More than ever in this version, which features a melancholy soundscape by Ben and Max Ringham, “Betrayal” becomes an elegy about time and memory, in which nothing stays fixed or certain. There’s new resonance to the continuing references to a joyful moment when Jerry threw Emma and Robert’s little girl into the air at a family gathering.

It’s mentioned in the very first scene, when Emma and Jerry meet again. The problem is they can’t agree on where the event happened, in his kitchen or hers.

Ms. Ashton’s Emma tries to conceal how much this small discrepancy upsets her, but her eyes are brimming. She thought she’d always at least have this memory intact — a vision of everyone, together, happy for a moment. It turns out she was mistaken.

[cookiedoughmeagain]

Haven DVD Commentaries - Season Five, Episode Two

5.02 - Speak No Evil. Commentary with Shawn Pillar and Lloyd Segan, Executive Producers

As with 5.01, this was directed by Shawn. The commentary follows straight on from the commentary for 5.01 so the sound quality is still utterly, utterly terrible. Shawn also talks really quickly and gets into some technical director speak which I can’t follow, so this doesn’t have everything. But it does have some interesting stuff :)

SP: So as I said in the previous commentary, each of these is like a two hour movie where we do one story over two episodes. Which really allowed the actors and the writers to go deeper into their story arcs, we didn’t have to reset it for each episode. They really got to play a longer arc which allowed for longer character scenes and just better production values because we were able to prep for 12 days and shoot for 12 days.

[As we see Duke’s landrover parked next to the bronco on the beach] LS: And there’s another of those fabulous helicopter shots. SP: Yep. We CG’d in Eric’s truck. [As Duke sits down next to Nathan by the bronco] This was the last scene of the day that we shot and it was a fun thing to figure out [so that Duke wouldn’t see the bullet wound in Nathan’s shoulder]. LS: He looks so pale and tired SP: He’s actually freezing. It was the last shot of the day so it was very very cold.

[They wonder what the temperature actually was, but veer off into a complicated discussion of the maths behind converting celsius to fahrenheit without ever getting to any figure in either.] SP: This is a good example of a scene that doesn’t look as good on digital as it would have looked on film. This is a scene in this new structure that TW Peacock shot for me under his schedule. He was the director after me. I did one and two, he did the next two. And I gave him this scene because I trusted him, he’s a great director. That’s a CG pencil. I told him how I wanted it shot and he did a great job. And the colour timing we were able to bring that down because it had to match the scene that preceded it, which was a more overcast day so we tried to darken that scene as much as we could and take out some of the contrast. LS: What does TW stand for? SP: I don’t know. I’ve known him for 5 years, I’ve never asked.

[As Duke and Nathan are asking each other if they’re going to be OK] SP: I love these two actors together. Eric Balfour and Lucas, they are just - I always say this is the real love story in Haven. Bromance. LS: Absolutely. Listen, these guys know each other more than anybody else, right? They’re the version of Vince and Dave without being [blood?] brothers.

SP: So this is where we got to see Mara choose her wardrobe. She killed that girl, took her clothes because she liked her jacket. And this is where we really get into what Mara looks like, where it starts to deviate what Audrey looks like. LS: Fabulous performance from Molly Dunsworth. SP: Molly is adorable and beautiful, and I have a think for blue eyes, I like to cast people with blue eyes and as you can see these two [Molly as Vickie and Emily as Mara] have amazing blue eyes. And I liked the idea that Mara just stabbed that girl in the eye, stole her clothes and is now walking off with Molly. That was also a scene that I did not shoot, TW shot that one. I scouted it, told him how I wanted it shot. Out of 151 days of shooting this year I directed 72 days. LS: We should acknowledge our fantastic directors [there are some names here I can’t catch]. Our casting director out of Halifax.

[As Dwight talks to Vince in Dave’s hospital room] SP: There was another scene we shot the same day in this room; we shot an entire day in the hospital room, different scenes, a lot of page count. So the good thing about the new shooting structure is as well as the main characters’ story arcs running over two episodes, you also get to play even the guest stars arcs over two episodes. So you really get to know and care about the guest stars before we kill them. Or before we, put them through the wringer. LS: So we saw Dwight’s phone there and people don’t realise that has to be created. SP: Yeah the props department either has it before so it’s ready on the day or you shoot those close ups to insert later. LS: But they are specifically created for that scene.

[As we see Dave’s dreams rushing through the forest] SP: So this is something I shot later. We used slow motion on a C300 camera. And we sort of separated that out and those visions become important later. But we block shot a lot of that stuff and then we shot some more as we shot more scenes and intercut that with Dave’s dreams as he’s passed out.

[As we see Vickie drawing for Mara] SP: So this was fun to shoot. A lot of directing is knowing how you’re going to cut it together, and how you’re going to get the required shots fast and efficiently. So those drawings were pre-done, we had photos of the location and then they had the drawings ready on set for the day. LS: I think one of the people it’s important to acknowledge is Mr Wood from Stargate who oversees the visual effects [ie the thinny that Mara tries to walk through]. He’s on set and he’s designing these with you. SP: Yes we have a lot of meetings. First we work with the writers to try to keep it on budget. Every episode has a pre-determined budget that I do at the beginning of the season. So the writers try to write to that, what we call A, B or C budgets. The season openers and finales have bigger budgets and other episodes have smaller ones. The writers write to that and then it’s never a complete match so we sort of carry the running totals forward.

[As Duke’s walking up the jetty with the fisherman] SP: I love this shot. I love cranes out in the water. This is an actor that we brought back from an episode I directed in season two I think, Horace who was the boat captain of a different boat that Duke’s father owned at one point. LS: And I think those are the actor’s actual overalls that he’s wearing there. SP: Those are his overalls, he just showed up like that. He’s such an interesting actor. We actually had him take out his teeth. He did the scene once with his teeth in and then we had him take them out because I thought it was more interesting with his teeth out.

[As Nathan is signing out the shotgun] SP: We finally got to shoot the gun locker. We built this gun locker. That’s on stage in the hockey rink with the police station. And we finally got the gun locker in there! LS: And the sets have expanded over the course of the seasons, right? SP: Yeah we keep making the sets bigger and bigger. And this was fun because we got use this set and to see Jayne as Gloria who is just so amazing. Jayne Eastwood is so brilliant and funny. Seeing her freaked out here where she thinks it’s mice. So that’s a partial CG shot [of the aether vibrating around]. LS: Is that on shaky cam? SP: A little bit of hand held shaky cam and then we added on the CG. And all those monitor images we shot [the CCTV where Gloria sees Mara coming into the building]

[As we see Nathan arrive at the morgue] SP: This was a fun shot to shoot, to destroy this whole place, and I really wanted to get this high angle shot of Gloria being pulled out. I really like to mix the humour and the heart and the scary.  So we shot that from a studio crane, shooting down. It’s actually a difficult shot to get as the drawer moves open.

[As Dwight pulls up to Duke at the jetty to take him to the Barrow’s] SP: So this location became a character in the story that we pay off over time as we find out that this is Duke and Jennifer’s spot to meet in a crisis, so they could get in that boat and take off. So everyone is kind of out in their own place, and then other characters come and pull them back into the storyline, which is kind of interesting and thematic. You don’t realise it’s important until later when it comes out and Nathan confronts Duke. LS: Another beautifully framed shot [looking at Duke through the window of Dwight’s truck] SP: Thank you. So I love the conflict between those two characters and whenever Duke and Dwight get to fight is super fun.

SP: So here’s a thing, I love this scene with the Tab, but this is my grandmother in Jugs Ahoy. My grandmother was an actress in the 50s and 60s, and 70s. Sandra Giles. So we re-purposed a photo from Getty Images that we found, and the art department made Jugs Ahoy. I didn’t tell my mom or my grandmother so they were watching the episode they were like; Oh My God! These two actors Richard and John [Vince and Dave] are so funny, they are two of my favourite actors to direct, ever. And the writers write beautiful scenes. Truly these are great characters, switching from comedy to mystery, and the secrets they have between them. It’s just amazing. LS: This is a great example of actors who have depth and the experience and elevate everything that they do. SP: We did a little CG enhancement on these [Dave’s] bruises. John is so good.

SP: So here they [Dwight and Duke] have gone back to the [Barrow] house and we pulled off the door. We spent a lot of time trying to work out how that door would be kicked in and what it would look like.

[As we see Gloria talking to Nathan about the ‘real original’ Audrey Parker and who Mara is] SP: The writers did a great job keeping all the story balls in the air and following the characters and what they’re going through, as they follow the investigation and how the different story lines intertwine, so we get to see not only the mystery unfold but we get to see the interpersonal relationship between the two characters, which is just a really good job. LS: It’s great, it makes the story telling so much more compelling. So, is that a real actor [that Gloria is digging a bullet out of]? SP: That is a real actor, that’s the same actor that got shot in the head by Mara in the [coffee shop] store room. LS: That’s not an easy job, he has to stay so still. SP: So there’s quite a lot going on in this scene and I love when the writers write these multi-layered multi-action scenes, where you see him putting things together and making decisions while you see her doing what she’s doing. It’s fun for a director and it’s fun for the actors to try and pull all that off, where people aren’t necessarily seeing what the other person’s going through.

[As Nathan walks from the morgue to the bronco] SP: So it’s one of the few shots I do like this but I felt the hand held effect here escalates the tension. And when you have good actors like Lucas Bryant, you can pull it off without cuts, which is great. LS: Yeah he can do more with a look than anything else right?

SP: So this is our hospital set with the new nurses station. We’ve always had the hallway but we knew we were going to be playing more stuff in the hospital. And you’re starting to get a sense now that this trouble is getting worse, because Duke’s always there when someone’s getting sewn up. So the idea is that the audience should be starting to figure it out. But making this stuff scarier was my biggest fear that we wouldn’t be able to pull it off, so you really want to make sure that the camera is accentuating and escalating the tension.

[The scene with the Barrow family and Collette’s father] SP: This is a fantastic actor we flew out from LA and he just blew us away. He is in his mid to late 80s and crushed it so hard. His face is so interesting and we got so into it that we just couldn’t get enough of him. Just shooting his face was so interesting, and he did a really good job. So the cool thing about this character, and the people of Haven, is their defence mechanism of just changing the subject or lying, and covering up these secrets for all these years, and how lies in families travel through time and are never really dealt with, they just perpetuate. So this is a fun father-daughter scene with an old guy who may or may not be remembering something. Or is he just in denial, is he not wanting to tell the truth. LS: There’s also some very specific wardrobe here, with the bowtie. SP: We tried to get a lot of texture in there. The layers on Dwight and the layers on him. LS: Beautiful layers on him and I actually love the layers on her as well. SP: I do like a close up and on this actor I was just in love with his face and he was doing so much and it’s just a story with so much dialogue here that it has to be compelling and you have to be drawn into it. So I felt like we needed that extra close up. So we did it with him and we did it with the other actors as well.

SP: So you need to open up some of these scenes and I really wanted to use this hospital corridor for movement coming in and out of the scenes. Which is a fun and difficult thing with our tight budget figuring out how many days we could afford with how many different actors. So a lot of times we’ll clump scenes together based on actor availability and try to keep the budget down for cast. Which is a challenge sometimes with the schedule.

SP: This is an interesting scene where we actually CG’d Jennifer’s face onto a dummy. Because we didn’t have her back, so we found a shot of her in the cave and CG’d it there. LS: And we got her permission to do so. SP: Of course. From a story telling standpoint, it took us all the way through episode one and half way through episode two looking for Jennifer before we finally got to see her there.

LS: So for those people who are really studying production, this episode is an excellent example of how we’re really utilising our standing sets. We were able to intersperse exterior locations with interior sets extensively.

[Where we see the flashback to a season one conversation between Audrey and Nathan in the office] LS: We actually debated about this too because we want to misdirect the audience a little bit, about whether that was a real sequence, whether he was thinking about it or whether it was a vision, all of those kinds of things.

[As Mara phones Nathan to ask him for the aether] SP: I thought Lucas, and Emily, did a wonderful job in this scene and this is the first time we see him stand up to her and we see what he’s going through. I love when actors actually react and give you so much that you can actually take the other side of a phone call and their lines’ off camera so you can see the reactions. I think the cast has gotten so good at just giving so much when they’re not talking and it’s just much more compelling to see their reactions. LS: I also want to point out again Eric Cayla’s beautiful lighting and the diffusion of the light with Nathan here. SP: It’s beautiful.

[As Vince is getting the dashcam footage from the uniformed cop] SP: So this is a good young actor we found, Larry. And it was fun to give him an arc in this episode. And also playing the difference between Vince being the old head of the Guard and the conflict with Dwight. LS: The role of Larry really brought a nice piece of business to that scene. SP: Dwight and Vince sort of have this father-son thing going on. They’re both tall. I always thought in my mind that Vince was Dwight’s dad. They kind of look alike and they have the same build. So this is step two in the Dwight and Vince conflict where he ultimately challenges him for leadership of the Guard. And it’s about is he getting too old, is he too stuck in the past, is his agenda torn too much with his brother, and the conflict between the old guard and the new guard. LS: Yeah this is a big dramatic moment. [They discuss the shots taken from outside the room and how they used these towards the end of the scene just before Nathan comes in, so it’s kind of showing Nathan’s point of view.] SP: So this is Dwight owning it as the Chief and Nathan being more subservient or, he doesn’t care. But this is a big moment and we tried to built it out with looks between them [Dwight and Nathan] LS: Well there’s a lot of choreography in this scene too. And it’s lit once so that you could do that. SP: It was three and half pages of dialogue so it was worth all the additional shots, from the additional angles. For me in these talking scenes you’ve got to have a moving camera, you’ve got to have something going on or the audience is going to get bored, even with the great dialogue. You’re always trying to find the most dramatic, visual way to tell the story. LS: Yes and always to be moving the camera not for the sake of moving it but for the purposes of the story. SP: And you want to also give the actors the freedom to go where they want to go, so that they can make it real. It doesn’t matter how great your shots are if the writing’s not realised by the actors.

[As Nathan finds Duke on the pier] SP: This was another very cold day. And it’s another scene on the dock and I really tried to make each scene there look different and shoot different parts of the dock. LS: This is a big emotional moment here. SP: It’s really hard - I’ve got to give the actors credit - it is really hard to be this good and pull this off. And look how cold Eric is, he’s freezing, and it plays into the uncomfortablness and the emotional craziness of what they’re going through. And I like how the writers go from something dramatic, to the mystery plot, to a little bit of comedy and it gives you a sense of their relationship. And to me that’s, when you get humour and heart in the same scene, that’s what life is. That’s what makes it feel real to me. SP: And this is the first time we see one of the characters on camera get sewn up. And the conflict here is Nathan knows he’s confronting him and he’s going to be the one to do it. And he knows he’s got to get through to him before he gets sewn up and dies. So it’s very heroic of Nathan to come here and confront his friend who’s in denial. And Lucas did a great job acting this scene knowing that his eyes were going to be shut, and then later he had to pretend that his mouth; he coudln’t breathe. So it’s a lot for these actors to play. [Where we see Duke’s flashbacks to his time with Jennifer] SP: So this montage wasn’t scripted this was something we came up with in post and pitched it to Matt and Lloyd and the gang and just said; we don’t have Jennifer in the episode but we need her in the episode, we need to feel her and see that relationship otherwise this sequence isn’t going to work. So we intercut it with [Nathan] choking and really milked it with slow motion. And this song is actually a song that we used in another episode when Duke kills Gloria’s step-son. And we temp’d the cut to that sequence and I couldn’t find another song that worked so well, so after a big survey with Lloyd and the gang and the music supervisors, and they all said, yes of course you can use that song again because it’s emotionally Duke’s point of view. LS: And I think Gabrielle really supported that notion from her perspective bringing an important female point of view to this entire sequence. SP: Well one of the great things about Matt and Gab is having a male and a female perspective, although in some ways Matt’s more female than Gab, and Gab’s more male, but they have that nice balance of humour and heart, and then they just nail the plot and they just keep the mystery going and try to keep all three things going at the same time. So we always knew this was a big, big scene, a big moment. And some of this was engineered because we didn’t have an option on Emma, who played Jennifer. She went off to get married and explore other things, so the writers really crafted this story line and this arc around her availability. LS: And to keep Jennifer’s memory fresh and to understand and make that connection as to why Duke is mourning her loss.

[As Nathan meets Mara in the woods to hand over the aether] SP: This sequence was fun and difficult to shoot. We actually had three cameras this day; we just had so much to shoot we had three cameras. Sometimes having three cameras slows you down. I like to shoot with as many cameras as I can get, to get more in less time. We didn’t have time for make up [for the black aether on her hand], so we just went CG. It’s one of those things if we had to change her hand out it would have cost and extra 10 minutes here, five minutes there.

SP: Poor Nathan! He gets punched in every episode.

SP: So this is one of my favourite Lucas moments here where he handcuffs Mara. There’s no dialogue here, he just has to pull it off. LS: It’s an emotional moment here.

[About the dashcam footage that Vince and Dave watch] SP: So that’s actually doubles we shot; we just got some doubles to look like them. We didn’t want to go all the way back to the lighthouse so we just put up a fence and had some doubles that looked like them walking away so it was like the car POV.

[The opening of the scene with Gloria and Duke on the pier] SP: This is a scene I love, it’s off the crane over the water. We had the crane for the day so every scene gets a crane shot and this is a shot I absolutely love. And this was another scene that was freezing that we shot that same day, Eric had a really busy day this day. And this wind was crazy. This was the last scene we shot of the day, the coldest scene of the day. And Jayne Eastwood’s just so great. The two of them together is just so good. LS: The wind really brings some wonderful texture to this scene. SP: It’s funny, when we were shooting it everyone was saying it was too much wind, but I was telling them it would be fine by the time we cut it together; we just cut out the windiest parts. And you think you can’t hear them because you’re listening on these little headphones, but later when the microphones are there and you’re actually mix it you can hear them pretty well. LS: And in some cases the wind might be a distraction to the eyes, but I think in this instance you’ve managed to cut it in such a way that it adds to the scene. SP:  And again for the transition from film to digital we couldn’t have had better days. LS: All credit to Shawn Pierce here in managing this emotional transition [in terms of the music] SP: And this scene transition here we go from close ups on Duke to Nathan, because the two of them are so connected.

[As Nathan waits for Dwight to come get Mara] LS: And now we have a huge piece of business coming up. SP: These two episodes really set the tone of what’s going to happen in the next two episodes. Emily did a great job with this scene. This is one of these segments we did a couple weeks later, when the actors were available.

[lancecarr]

ART OF THE CUT WITH Martin Bernfeld, editor of ӈellboy

Editor Martin Bernfeld in the cutting room for Hellboy.

Martin Bernfeld has been editing features for 15 years, including Project Almanac, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, Power Rangers, The Babysitter, and Bent.

For this interview, I talked with Martin about his latest film, Hellboy.

(This interview was transcribed with SpeedScriber. Thanks to Martin Baker at Digital Heaven)

HULLFISH: What was post-production schedule like? When did they start principal photography?

BERNFELD: They started shooting Hellboy in the middle of September 2017 in Bulgaria, and I was hired at the end of October. So I jumped on a plane after getting the call that I was hired on the film and had quite a lot of dailies to catch up on.

Editor Martin Bernfeld, on location in Bulgaria

I edited in Bulgaria through the finish of shooting and stayed another week after they wrapped to finish the assembly. We relocated to London after the Christmas break to start the director’s cut through picture lock.

While we were originally scheduled to finish at the end of November, it carried through into January making it one year and four months of post.

HULLFISH: How did you and the director get connected on this project?

BERNFELD: I interviewed for it, set up through my agent. I talked with Neil and Lloyd Levin one of the producers. I liked what they said about the direction and vision there was for the film.

While it was tough to start in the middle of production, Neil and I managed to spend some lunch breaks having more in-depth conversations about what he’s looking for and make sure we were on the same page before attacking dailies.

HULLFISH: Did you bring your own editorial team to Bulgaria?

BERNFELD: I wanted to, but they had already had two Bulgarian assistants that were organizing the footage ready to be edited. I used those assistants during principal photography and hired a new editorial crew when moving to London. It was a great team. Luke Clare was my first assistant and Gemma Bourne was the second. I didn’t know them prior, but they all came highly recommended from other editors.

HULLFISH: Well, this is obviously a big VFX movie. You did Power Rangers with Dody Dorn. Dody and you and I talked about that movie when it came out. How does your VFX background help when it comes to editing a movie like this?

BERNFELD: I do have a fairly good understanding of the VFX process: what you can and can’t do and how to achieve what you are looking for when you have to reimagine or rethink sequences editorially. We also had a strong VFX supervisor — Steve Begg — He and I had a very tight working relationship. There was one specific sequence — the giant fight — that needed some rethinking. It was designed to play as one long shot. When all the takes were stitched together to achieve the one shot, it was running at 7 minutes which is obviously too long and too slow. We were aiming for a 2.30-3min action sequence that had the energy and pace we wanted. I had to work out a way to keep the same action and get it into the 2.30-3min and still maintain the concept of the oner.

David Harbour as ‘Hellboy’ and Sasha Lane as ‘Alice Monoghan’ in HELLBOY. Photo Credit: Mark Rogers.

That’s where having a good understanding of how to best integrate a digital camera takeover helped the process of eliminating time and communication with the VFX supervisor to find a way to shorten the scene.

For example, I took the profile shot of Hellboy running and shortened it by adding a camera whip pan to a full CG shot revealing the giant. From there the camera booms down into another plate of Hellboy, which tracks with him running up the giant and going in for a punch, this plate was also reduced significantly.

Other stitches were more complicated in execution, but the same concept. However, there were a few beats that we felt landed better and were funnier when cutting to them directly, so we deviated from the one long shot concept. At the end of the day, we had to do what was best for the movie.

At the mix for Hellboy.

HULLFISH: So you have to have the imagination to come up with something interesting that tells the story, but understand the restrictions of what can be done with what was shot.

BERNFELD: Right, because Hellboy (the character) is not full CGI. David Harbour was in makeup and the suit rolling around and punching blue placeholders as a representation of a giant. You have all these interactions that need to tell the story that’s in the script or previz. It was a challenge, but it’s a fun little ride.

HULLFISH: I would think your Power Rangers experience would have given you a great background for having to do that.

BERNFELD: Absolutely. The whole third act in Power Rangers is practically one long action sequence and 90 percent CG. Working with empty plates of a location, with the opportunity to add anything you want, makes you focused on how animation can help you tell the story and timing of VFX shots. A shot of an empty plate with no monster can feel very long in an action scene, even with rough animation. But once the shots are finished you need more time then you think to register the action, so not cutting the action so tight at an early stage helped me when approaching some scenes in Hellboy.

I worked on a few lower budget films with complicated VFX, before Power Rangers, and those budget restrictions train you on how to be more specific and creative in what you need to tell the story within the means you have.

HULLFISH: Let’s talk a little bit about the importance of being able to collaborate with people — having the type of personality that allows you to give-and-take with the director, with VFX people, with assistants…

BERNFELD: I feel collaboration is essential to the post process. When I hire assistants, I try to find people who like to be part of a team. Someone who takes pride in their work and wants to take ownership of the task I give them, whether it is sound work or temp VFX. I want them to feel involved in the creative process, and that they are very much part of the movie.

Personally, I always try to stay positive and optimistic regardless of what situations and demands are thrown at Post, and I try and hire assistants that do the same. They are the first line of contact, so representing the cutting room well I feel is important.

Same when it comes to the director, producers or the studio. I want them to know that I’m in it with them, we’re one team. We’ll take every note into account and do whatever needs to be done to make it a great movie. I believe as an editor that we are there to help create the director’s vision of the film with every tool at our disposal.

HULLFISH; Sounds like something you might have said to the director in your interview!

BERNFELD: Yes! I do stress that in my interviews. I like to collaborate and get any new ideas. There never a bad idea; every idea can lead to a good one.

HULLFISH: Tell me about the nuts and bolts of looking at a scene when you’re looking at a blank timeline and a bin full of dailies for a scene. What is your approach? How do you handle that?

BERNFELD: First, the dailies get organized by my assistants. I like to have my bins in Frame view, and they’re all organized in script order. It doesn’t matter where the slate lands alphabetically. Q can come before A (in the lettering of the camera set-ups). Then a KEM roll is created where I view my dailies from. As I watch the takes I cut my preferred line readings and moments into a selects sequence. Once I’m done going through all the footage from the given scene, I reorganize that selects sequence into the scripted version of the scene and then I start whittling that down into my first cut of the scene.

Avid timeline screenshot from Hellboy. To see more detail, option-click on the image and choose to open in a new tab. From there you can zoom in.

I don’t always edit from the beginning through the end. When I’m watching the dailies, I keep a close eye on certain beats that I feel will be pillars of the scene, and will build out the sequence around those. I let the moments tell me where I need to be.

Editorially — when I construct the scene — I always think back to the staple five questions: Where am I? Why am I here? Where have I come from emotionally? What does the character want in the scene? and “What’s the goal of the scene and what does the scene really need?”

Those questions are lingering in my head when I watch all the dailies and I always look for those small nuances that will give me those answers to best tell the story.

HULLFISH: So when you’re watching your KEM roll, you are actively pulling stuff out as you see it?

BERNFELD: Yes, but one key step before I start pulling material is to re-read the scene from the script first. That gives me a fresh memory of the beats and nuances in the script so I don’t overlook any of those important moments.

Having those in mind also helps me spot if something isn’t coming across clearly in the shot footage. I can report back to the director to get their thoughts to find a solution. Either we pick it up when possible, I look for an editorial workaround, or perhaps it was purposefully left out and then I can continue without that moment.

When I approach a scene, I like to build out every single beat in the script and don’t focus too much on running time. Multiple times I’ve gone back to my assemblies in month eight or ten of cutting and brought back that built out beat after we oversimplified a scene or need to highlight information. I like this approach because it enables me to go back and pull small ideas that I created. I find it helps to have a strong backbone of an assembly.

Milla Jovovich as ‘Nimue the Blood Queen’ and Penelope Mitchell as ‘Ganeida’ in HELLBOY. Photo Credit: Mark Rogers.

HULLFISH: Do you remember the length of that first assembly? And did you even bother to watch the assembly all the way through?

BERNFELD: I watched it and it was too long, but you could get a strong sense of where to focus first. I think it was about two hours and forty-five minutes.

HULLFISH: What are some of the things that you and the director found as you started to watch things in context and how things changed when you did see scenes next to each other?

BERNFELD: We focused primarily on pacing and getting the movie down to a proper length. We had conversations about the structure and where we were trying different placements for different scenes to help the pacing and storytelling.

HULLFISH: Were there structural changes?

BERNFELD: The opening scene got shuffled around a bit. It was the introduction to Nimue (Milla Jovovich) and sets up who the villain is; what her powers are; and what the threat of the movie is going to be. We tried it in four different places to see if there was a stronger way to introduce her. When we put the introduction later, she became not as important and threatening so in the end, so we left it where it was scripted. But we had to try all the options, and assess what is best for the story. Trial and error are one area of editing that I love and feel are important to the final product.

Once we settled on where it belonged, the other factor we had to manage was the duration. It was a heavy dialogue-driven scene, with the assembly version at seven-minutes long, and we brought it down to a five-minute scene. But once we previewed, the audience wasn’t responding to it as a prologue, so we decided to try a narrative by Ian McShane. It ended up as a two and half minute introduction of the character, which worked better for an audience and to get to Hellboy earlier.

Because the script was fairly linear in order of events, there wasn’t a ton of opportunity for restructuring. However, we did move one scene about our secondary villain called Gruagach, a talking pig. We delayed his finding of Nimue’s head so we could get into Hellboy’s story and live with him before starting the two parallel stories.

David Harbour stars as ‘Hellboy’ in HELLBOY.  Photo Credit: Mark Rogers.

HULLFISH: I love the solution of cutting down the opening villain introduction by writing some narration and doing some ADR which allowed you to shorten the scene in ways that I’m assuming were not possible by just eliminating dialogue that was already spoken.

BERNFELD: We tried it many different ways. We cut the scene as tight as possible with the only dialogue needed for exposition, but that turned it emotionless. So a better way was to go with narration which also gave us the opportunity to play with the tone for the movie.

HULLFISH: Were you able to pull previous music cues or sound effects from previous movies to be able to temp out this movie?

BERNFELD: One conversation that I had with Neil and Lloyd the producer before I started editing was that we wanted a very different approach to tone for this movie. So we deliberately did not use any temp score from the earlier movies, or original sound design. We wanted to make this became a more grounded version. Very early on we talked about Hellboy being an old-school rocker which brought us to our music needle drops living in the rock world.

After screening it, there were discussions about the classic rock choices, so we took a stab at modernizing the soundtrack — like Kanye West. However, after our recruited screenings bumped a bit on the modern music, we went back to the old-school rock and roll, since that is in the DNA of Hellboy’s character and what people were looking for.

HULLFISH: When picking temp scores, how did you choose which ones to consider?

BERNFELD: I like to listen to a wide variety of scores and pull from every movie imaginable, I find that this gives a fresh idea for the music. The challenge is to keep the musical tone as consistent as possible. We mostly used The Mummy, Alien, The Descent, and we also snuck in some Under the Skin and JFK.

HULLFISH: JFK? Wow!

BERNFELD: I know! It’s different, but it suited the scene! We also used Gone Girl for some of the more modern tonal cues.

We were lucky to have our composer, Ben Wallfisch, join very early in the process, which made a big difference to be able to edit the movie with the music that will be in the final film. We had several conversations with Ben about the tone, wanting to make this a different sounding movie. He was really excited about trying something completely different.

He made us a couple of musical suites we could work with: a hero suite and a villain suite. As his demos came in for the individual scenes we stripped away all the temp so we can work with the new tracks and give him feedback. He would come back with revisions as the edit evolved and made an amazing score for the movie!

HULLFISH: Also I would think with something that is very unique and different you run the risk of having temp love on stuff that you’ve listened to that his stuff might be great but because you’ve listened to something so different for so long it doesn’t want to stick.

BERNFELD: We really considered that not “falling in love with temp” because the last thing we wanted to do was not give Ben the opportunity to give us something completely different.

HULLFISH: Nuts-and-bolts-wise, with the suits that he gave you, was he giving you stems of some kind so that if you wanted to use the theme without the full orchestration you could?

BERNFELD: He didn’t actually, he provided us a mix of the cues. I worked closely with the music editor, Tony Lewis, to modify cues as the edit evolved — obviously with Ben’s involvement throughout the whole process.

We had the same approach with sound design, which also started early on. This was done by Phaze. We had a lot of conversations on how the different creatures and environments should sound like. We tossed design stems back and forth throughout the whole process to develop the sounds, so by the time we got to the mix stage we didn’t spend the time developing or changing ideas. It was just a matter of mixing it. That proved to be very helpful because we had a limited time to mix the film.

HULLFISH: How are you managing the replacement of your early sound design that you did with the stuff Phaze did?

BERNFELD: Phaze always gave me stems split into backgrounds and hard effects, so I could take what they had done and manipulate it and add new ideas. I like to communicate with ideas in the timeline, having a representation of what I’m looking for helps me convey my thoughts that they can then take and expand on and make better.

HULLFISH: Are you doing the same process with the VFX stuff?

BERNFELD: Yes, I like to have temp comps in-house for timing purpose. Once VFX shots come in, I always keep three iterations of the shot in the timeline including the temp comp that we did in-house. I always like to have a quick reference of the shot’s progress when things move fast and you are dealing with over eighteen hundred visual effects shots. Towards the end, we had approximately 100 shots a day coming in that needed to be looked at and given notes on. Sometimes you don’t catch everything in the immediate, that is when it’s helpful to have a quick history of the progression. If I always wipe my timeline clean it takes a longer time to find older versions and compare iterations. So my timeline can become quite big, up to eight or nine video tracks.

HULLFISH: What about audio tracks? Do you have a limit on how many you like? Do you keep a bin of your favorite D-Verbs and audio effects?

BERNFELD: It depends on the movie, but on Hellboy, I worked with 24 audio tracks: four dialogue tracks where I add EQs, compressor and De-esser on them for the dialogue to sound crispier and punch through better. Then I have my mono sound effects and my stereo sound effects and my music tracks, then two mono and two stereo tracks that have the universal D-Verb effect on it.

Milla Jovovich as ‘Nimue the Blood Queen’ and David Harbour as ‘Hellboy’ in HELLBOY. Photo Credit: Mark Rogers.

With my D-verb tracks, I can quickly add ringouts to either Dialogue, SFX or Music, to make transitions sound better without constantly rendering. The track has as much ‘verb as possible, which I control by how much volume the segment has.

The D-verb tracks have been a huge asset for scenes that take place in large spaces. For example, in Hellboy, there is a full dialogue scene that takes place in a church.

In addition to keeping the dialogue on its original tracks, I also mix it down and put it on my ‘verb track. I can then watch the scene and with the use of my Avid Artist Mix –  I can easily record and change the volume as the scene goes on — how much ‘verb I want — because it changes based on how close you are to characters and based on the emotion of the scene.

HULLFISH: Wow that’s pretty cool. I never heard anybody talk about doing that before. That’s pretty interesting. Let’s talk about a couple of specific scenes that I have access to — the Father/Son Scene in the Osiris Club.

BERNFELD: I really loved that scene because of its simplicity and how it focuses on the two characters and their father-son connection and relationship that is the basis of the movie. It also allowed for their banter to shine. Ian McShane played a more tough dad role, and David Harbour conveyed Hellboy much more of a teenager — a lot of attitude and insecurities. It was fun to cut together because of their wide range of performances they gave. And that doesn’t pertain to this scene only, in every single scene David Harbour constantly gave options to play with so you can go in whichever direction you wanted.

HULLFISH: At the beginning of our conversation, you talked about the questions you always ask yourself as you’re going through a scene. What would that internal dialogue have looked like on THIS scene?

BERNFELD: Where and Why? Since this is a new location, I had to make sure we establish the setting and convey Hellboy’s emotional state.

Where are we emotionally? Hellboy just killed his friend, so I wanted to continue that emotion and sadness going into his bedroom shaving his horns. Broom, his father comes in to comfort his son with tough love.

Broom’s agenda? He is the head of the BPRD and wants to send Hellboy on another mission to help him, the only way he knows how.

The goal? To establish their relationship and show Hellboy asking what the words his friend told him before he died meant. Ian quickly breezes over that and says its nonsense, but clearly, he knows what it means and doesn’t want to tell Hellboy. This is important as this is the theme and backbone of the movie.

HULLFISH: You almost need a sense like an actor would have of: what’s my motivation? Where does my character have to go? What do I have to reveal in this scene so that some other scene, later on, makes sense?

BERNFELD: Absolutely. That’s what I love about editing. You get all the pieces and it’s sort of like a little sandbox that you can start playing in. What nuances that you — as an editor — find intriguing and what emotionally brings something out in you when you’re watching the dailies.

HULLFISH: What about the “Arrived” clip?

BERNFELD: This was a pivotal scene where our villain and hero meet each other. Nimue tries to persuade Hellboy to join her side, be a king and rule the world, yet he doesn’t want to. In order to emphasize her motivation and why she didn’t just kill him when he refused, we tried out a lot of additional dialogue to clarify. We cut the new dialogue with over-the-shoulder and wide shots. But in the end it turns out we didn’t need as much to explain her motivation, the audience got it. So we ended up stripping a lot of that away. I kept a couple of small couple lines and the scene turned out better for it.

HULLFISH: I love the idea that landing on the final solution for this scene was a process. It needed to go through iterations.

BERNFELD: Definitely. That’s why I like to make my assemblies as good as possible, well knowing that it will change, but if I put everything in there then I don’t have to go back to dailies as often to find or recreate beats. I can pull from my assembly and quickly put together a version that combines the old with the new and refine as necessary. I then circle back through dailies again to make sure there isn’t a better performance or different line readings if the intention has changed.

HULLFISH: You mentioned that a lot of times you would make a version and then move along and then come back to an old version you did. What kind of organizing are you doing in your bins and in your project to be able to find those previous cuts of scenes quickly and easily?

BERNFELD: I keep my first couple of versions in my scene bins where I have my KEM rolls and my selects. I like to keep everything in one place.

HULLFISH: Once you start making revisions those are someplace else? They’re in the reel?

BERNFELD: I usually edit the revisions in the reels so I don’t have too many subsequences to keep track off. I have a bin with ideas and structures that I try, which I might come back to at a later stage if needed.

HULLFISH: Do you break the film into reels once you’ve done your first assembly? Or you break it into reels right away as you are assembly the scenes?

BERNFELD: I put the full assembly together and then divide it into reels.

HULLFISH: Martin, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.

BERNFELD: Thank you, it was an absolute pleasure speaking with you too!

Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV Editors

To read more interviews in the Art of the Cut series, check out THIS LINK and follow me on Twitter @stevehullfish

The first 50 interviews in the series provided the material for the book, “Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV Editors.” This is a unique book that breaks down interviews with many of the world’s best editors and organizes it into a virtual roundtable discussion centering on the topics editors care about. It is a powerful tool for experienced and aspiring editors alike. Cinemontage and CinemaEditor magazine both gave it rave reviews. No other book provides the breadth of opinion and experience. Combined, the editors featured in the book have edited for over 1,000 years on many of the most iconic, critically acclaimed and biggest box office hits in the history of cinema.

The post ART OF THE CUT WITH Martin Bernfeld, editor of “Hellboy” appeared first on ProVideo Coalition.

https://www.provideocoalition.com/aotc-hellboy/

[beaverla-blog1]

“The Shining” (1980) Review

Welcome back! This is going to be the first full movie review. Hopefully you have already listened to Season 1 – Episode 2 of “Here’s Johnny” and heard what both Justin and I had to say on this film. I am so very happy that this was the first movie we reviewed, not only because it is a personal favorite, but Kubrick is such a brilliant filmmaker and there is so much to dissect with this film. So before we start the review, let’s discuss some of the more important notes about the development and production of this horror classic.

This movie is based off of the novel of the same name, written by Stephen King. After the commercial failure of his last film, Kubrick needed to make a film that would be more financially successful but that would also allow him to flex his artistic ability. He decided to do a horror film, and for inspiration he locked himself in his office with a stack of horror novels and started his way through them. According to his secretary, there were constant slams against the wall as Kubrick discarded whatever book he was reading because it was not what he was looking for. However, the slams stopped and Kubrick emerged hours later with “The Shining” in his hand. According to Kubrick himself, the reason he chose the text was that “there’s something inherently wrong with human personality. There’s an evil side to it. One of the things that horror stories can do is to show us the archetypes of the unconscious, we can see the dark without having to confront it directly” (from Stanley Kubrick: The Complete Films by Paul Duncan). Kubrick did take a lot of artistic variance from the book, and although this allowed him to leave a great deal more to interpretation it also upset some people, including King himself.

A fun note in regards to casting; Kubrick’s top choice was the man who eventually took the role, Jack Nicholson. Others who auditioned for the role included Robert DeNiro, Harrison Ford, and Robin Williams. It blows my mind to try and imagine this movie with Robin Williams playing Jack Torrance. Stephen King is on record saying that he would not have picked any of these actors (B105FM in 2007).

Principal photography took place over a year, and each day is said to have been extremely long. Kubrick is known for his meticulousness and getting the exact shot he sees in his head. This is where some of the stories about the tensions between the actors and Kubrick arise. Kubrick apparently made changes to the script almost daily, and for anyone who has ever acted before it is obvious how frustrating that can be. Nicholson stopped even reading the new scripts and would just memorize lines or improvise right before shooting a scene. Shelly Duvall had an even more difficult time. She and Kubrick constantly argued, over the script, over the delivery of her lines, and her overall acting skills. Allegedly this fighting became so severe that she became physically ill and even started seeing her hair fall out. The scene where Wendy finds Jack’s manuscript was shot many, many times. This was not only due to Kubrick looking for a specific acting performance from Duvall, but also because he had different manuscripts each in a different language and with that language’s version of “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” (from Chris Hooton at the Independent, January 2017).

“The Shining” was also one of the very first films to use ‘Steadicam’. Steadicam allows a camera operator to maintain a steady shot regardless of his movements or any rough terrain. Garret Brown, the inventor of the Steadicam, was very intrigued by what Kubrick was using his new technology for with this film. So much so, that Brown became heavily involved with the filming and still proclaims the master vision of what Kubrick sought to place on film (from the audio commentary on the 2007 DVD release). The final budget was $19 million and the film made $44.4 million in the box office.

Plot:

I am not going to go into an in-depth discussion of the plot of the film. If you want that, listen to the podcast, go to Wikipedia, or WATCH THE DAMN MOVIE! Needless to say, it’s a great film with a whole lot to discuss. First, I am going to highlight some pros for the film, and then I am going to look at some cons. The film is great. There is a reason why it’s not only considered one of the best horror films, but also one of the best overall films of all time. The script is tight, the acting is brilliant and the tension throughout is palpable. I have also found that the older I get, the more I start to understand what happens to Jack Torrance. When you watch this as a kid, his craziness is scary but hard to relate to. However, as you mature and life starts showing you its hand, it becomes apparent that it would not take too much to take a normal man and turn him crazy. This film is also my favorite kind of horror film, because of how easy it is to see a situation like this taking place in real life.

It is important to note that the plot is not perfect, and those imperfections are far more apparent when watching the film critically. The injury timeline is a little screwy. Wendy tells the doctor at the beginning of the film that Jack hurt Danny five months prior to the start of the movie. However, when Jack is telling the ghostly bartender Lloyd about why his wife hates him, he says the injury took place three years prior to the events in the film. Although it can be explained away that Jack is starting to lose his grip on reality and his view on time is screwed up. And Kubrick is not one to let an error like that fly. But it is never addressed as such and I truly believe it was an oversight. I also feel that Dick Halloran was wasted as a character. I truly don’t see the reason why they brought him all the way from Miami just to kill him. He doesn’t even get to interact with any of the characters and his arc never develops. The film would have been better off having some random forest ranger come up and see what was going on at The Overlook. The furry scene is another that I find out of place. There isn’t a lot of setup for it, and it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the ghostly sights Wendy is seeing as she flees the hotel. It is iconic, I just don’t think it is necessary. Next, I feel the use of the N word is unnecessary. It might be that living in 2018, the word is so far from normal context that when I heard it used in the film I was immediately taken out of the scene. I also don’t think they can even use the excuse “it was a different time” because the film was released in 1980 and it was already established that it was taboo. Finally, my biggest problem is how fast Jack devolved mentally. The film had five months to play with, and for some reason they decided to use less than two for Jack to completely lose his mind. I think that the film would have been better suited to allow more time to pass to make Jack’s devolution make more sense.

With all this in mind, I gave plot 8.5 out of 10.

Cinematography:

I believe that this is one of the best films to use when justifying Kubrick’s genius as a filmmaker. There are three scenes in particular that I find illustrate this best. The first is the opening scene, with Jack driving up to The Overlook. It is shot from a helicopter, and shows Jack’s car driving on the mountain roads, surrounded by nothing but wilderness. It lets the audience know right away, without any need to speak words, that the family is isolated and that there is NO ONE around. The second scene takes place after Wendy finds Jack’s manuscript and his craziness is brought to light. Jack has his back to the large windows in the room and since this scene takes place midday, his face is hidden in the shadow. Wendy however is facing the windows and the light is illuminating her. And it’s as simple as that. Jack is shadowy because he is no longer the man we first met, and Wendy is in the light because she is finally seeing what the hotel has done to her husband. It’s a brilliant piece of directorship. Finally, the last scene that I really feel show why this film is a work of cinematic genius is when Jack is cutting down the bathroom door. The film is shot with Steadicam, so throughout the rest of the movie there are no shaky shots. But when Jack’s axe hits the door, the camera shakes. Each time. This is used to make the audience FEEL how hard Jack is hitting the door through camera work. It is so flawless, that the audience may not even notice.

This is why I give cinematography a 10 out of 10.

Audio:

I also strongly feel that the overall audio of this film is exquisite. One scene that illustrates this is Danny riding his tricycle throughout the hotel. When he is riding on the carpet, it is quiet. But the moment he hits the hard wood, the sound changes. It is abrupt but it is what it would sound like in real life. And again, when Danny goes from the hard wood onto the carpet it is silent again. It would have been so easy to ignore this, but Kubrick knows how important it is to hit the small details. Another audio aspect that I love is the main score. It is brilliant. If for some reason you don’t know it, go listen to it on YouTube. It will speak for itself. I also really enjoyed the “buzzing” that takes place periodically throughout the film. The buzzing will build throughout the scene, and sometimes it will lead to a scare and other times it will lead to nothing. It keeps the audience constantly guessing about what is actually going to happen. The last thing that I think is very important when discussing the audio quality of this film is Jack Nicholson’s delivery. At the start of the film he is articulate and charming. As the film goes on and Jack loses his mind, his speech devolves as well. Ultimately, he is reduced to grunts and screams.

Not surprisingly I gave audio a 10 out of 10.

How Scary is it?

When discussing how scary this film is to me, I feel I have to talk about how scary I found it when I was a kid and then as an adult. The first time I watched this movie, the horror came from the things that were scary to Danny. It is very easy to see how the events that take place in the movie could scare a kid. A rotting corpse attacking you in an abandoned room, two little girls that want you to play with them forever and ever and sometimes appear chopped into bits. Blood rushing down an elevator shaft and filling the hallway. And probably most terrifying of all, your father wanting to murder you. I think every son has a very basic fear that they are not good enough for their dad, and to have it realized in such a malevolent way is brutal for a young kid watching this movie.

As an adult, the fear comes from seeing what happens to Jack. It would be terrifying to be isolated in such a manner as the family is in this film. And to not only be isolated, but to feel yourself losing your grip on reality. To start questioning what is going on around you. To have your wife blame you for something you (think) you could never do again. And probably most basic of all, not being able to trust the one you love while dealing with all of this. This may not be the same kind of fear one experiences when watching a movie like “The Conjuring”, but the fear is one you feel deep in within yourself.

But even with all of that this movie is not all that scary, and modern technology prevents a modern audience from relating as well. Internet and cell phones make the idea of isolation seem so foreign, even when stuck on a snowy mountain.

This is why I rated this section the lowest. 7 out of 10.

Final Grade:

Out of 40, I scored “The Shining” 35.5. This gives the film an 89%, or a B+ which I feel it richly deserves. Even though the film may not be all that scary, the cinematography and acting make it more than worth the dollar it takes to rent on Amazon.