Image Conscious: A conversation with visual effects supervisor John "DJ" DesJardin

Trevor Hogg chats with visual effects supervisor John 'DJ' Des Jardin...

“2001: A Space Odyssey was my inspiration in 1968 when I was seven years old; it freaked me out even at such a young age because it seemed so real,” states Warner Bros. Visual Effects Supervisor John “DJ” DesJardin whose fascination with science fiction saw him attempt to translate his mental images into cinematic ones. The native of Wisconsin attended the University of Michigan with a particular career path in mind. “I actually went there with the intention of being a marine biologist of all things because they had really good science programs. During my freshmen orientation they started talking about the film program there and I immediately switched. It was like something went off inside me and said, ‘I could go to school, practice this thing I’ve been doing off to the side, and do it for real.’” With the school lacking such items as optical printers, the film student teamed with a friend who was well versed in electrical engineering to build the equipment he needed.

After graduating, DesJardin headed to Los Angeles in hopes of working for Douglas Trumbull’s visual effects company; upon arriving in the city, he discovered that the facility no longer existed. “I had a list of all the effects or graphic houses in Los Angeles and I just started calling all of them up; in June a company called Video Image called me back.” The company specialized in computer and motion graphics, as well as 24-fame video playback which involved syncing up graphics for motion picture cameras. “Greg McMurry and Richard Hollander were two of the partners in that company and they had built Comp C, which was a really sophisticated computer-control camera, for Douglas Trumbull. They did a lot of the crazy traffic lights in Blade Runner [1982] and a lot of stuff in the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture [1979]... That small place grew into a pretty decent mid-size visual effects company called VIFX that continued all the way through until the end of the 90s when it got bought by Rhythm and Hues.”

Technically, the first movie John DesJardin did anything for was 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), when he helped Greg McMurry shoot an insert on a computer screen for one of the spaceship control panels. DesJardin was pleased to see the end result in the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. “It was a pretty big deal to get high resolution imagery done for a movie. That’s why you have these certain landmark films, I think because places were setup for them but it was still an expensive concern to get the right imagery into the movie and make it look very good.” DesJardin learned quickly that making a living in the small industry was going to be difficult. “There were more than a few times where if the job we were bidding on didn’t come in for VIFX, I was going to be out of a job.” A major turning point was the release of Jurassic Park (1993) when studio executives realized that digital visual effects could add production value to their movies. “They see it as a tool that can be used from pre-production all the way through post-production; it’s not just a post-production concern, which was certainly what it was a long time ago.” Digital visual effects can prevent a lot of potential problems. “If you can previz a lot of what you’re getting into, it’ll answer a lot of questions and give somebody a common frame of reference departmentally throughout the entire production so that everybody knows what we’re trying for.”

“I almost want to say temperament more than anything,” replies DesJardin when asked what is essential to being a successful visual effects supervisor. “Can you keep yourself regimented, and disciplined to be able to get through what you’re going to have to go through to get something done? Can you keep your ideas fresh? Can you be a nice person?” DesJardin points out there are a lot of key elements involved in making a movie. “If you walk in thinking visual effects are the most important then you forget about writing, directing, the actors and everybody else. There are a lot of bigger concerns…so just be concerned about what you need to be concerned about and just be a nice person; just be pleasant about it because it’s a pretty lucky job to have. You’re not mining sulfur, your lungs are not filling up with sulfuric acid and you’re not dying when you’re 30. Have a little humility, keep your head down and do the work. That I think is the most important thing about being a visual effects supervisor.”

Contemplating what makes a great visual effect, John DesJardin remarks, “One that withstands the test of time maybe, I don’t know… I don’t even know if anybody can make those anymore. It seems like the shelf life is pretty short these days because we’re always doing them and then moving on.” Two recent movies stand out to DesJardin. “I went to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World [2010] this year; I had so much fun with that movie. The visual effects, while they weren’t realistic and were never meant to be, were fun. They were such an intrinsic part of that movie and it got a visceral reaction from me; I loved that. Then there is the tsunami at the beginning of Hereafter [2010] and that is a really great opening. So what am I suppose to say is better? Am I suppose to say that the tsunami is better because it’s a real tsunami and Scott Pilgrim didn’t have it? Scott Pilgrim wasn’t made to have that tsunami effect, it was made to have sound effect words coming out of the drum kit or something like that. That was what it was made for and because of that, that is a successful visual effect that I think is great.”

Working on The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) was a massive undertaking for John DesJardin. “The scope of it was huge and we were going to be required to really push things and do almost every kind of effect you could think of up to that point in the visual effects evolution. I think that I felt like that so much by the end of it, that I actually wanted to quit. I came out it and I started looking at projects coming up after that and it was like, ‘I just did that. And I did that too.’ And if I was looking for anything fresh in terms of the exact imagery I was going to have to do, I wasn’t finding it.” While he was considering a career change, DesJardin co-founded Velvetelvis Studios. “It’s more of an umbrella production company for projects that I like to do that aren’t directly related to my visual effects job. It allows me and my partners to play around with making graphic novels, [and] video games.” The career change never happened. “Richard Hollander called me and asked, ‘Can you help me out? I just need somebody who knows something, to do this shoot on Friday Night Lights [2004] in Texas.’ I thought, ‘I’ll do that. Make a little cash.’ Kind of like the mafia – you tried to get out and they pull you back in.”

DesJardin had a fateful encounter arranged for him by Anne Kolbe, the Vice President of Visual Effects at Warner Bros. “I was coming to the end of The Kingdom [2007] with Peter Berg and didn’t have much to go on,” remembers DesJardin. “Anne called me and said, ‘I’ve got this project that I want you to interview for but I can’t talk about it.’ And I said, ‘Alright, I’ll go to the meeting.’ She didn’t tell me who it was with or what it was for. It was that secret. I walked into Zack’s office not knowing it was Zack Snyder. His assistant Celeste told me, ‘Yeah, you’re going to be meeting with Zack.’ And I suddenly realized – Zack Snyder! He did Dawn of the Dead [2004] which I saw when I was in Texas shooting Friday Night Lights, and I really loved that movie. That remake was great. And then I realized that I had seen at another facility… some imagery from 300 [2006]. I’m a Frank Miller comic fan and I had the graphic novel 300 for years. The images that I was seeing at the facility were just like that graphic novel. And I thought, ‘If that’s the same Zack Snyder, that guy is cool.’ So there I was meeting with him for Watchmen [2009] which was amazing to me.” A couple of months later the filmmaker, who was also born in Wisconsin, contacted DesJardin again. “He liked me enough to give me a shot at doing Watchmen. What can I say? [We have] similar backgrounds in terms of parts of the U.S. where we grew up,” enthuses the visual effects supervisor. “Our pop culture references are all the same. I think every time we are on the set talking about something it is reduced to some kind of analogy with a line in Star Wars [1977] or something like that.”

When discussing the attitude Zack Snyder has towards visual effects, John DesJardin observes, “It is just a natural part of his language. He is not afraid to try a lot of things that I think other people might be hesitant to try.” Trying to recreate the JFK assassination in the opening of Watchmen was a problem because the right filming location could not be found. While standing in a parking lot a solution came to DesJardin; it involved retaining a small portion of the action, with the rest being constructed digitally. “I went to Zack and I drew a sketch. I just said, ‘I think you won’t be afraid of this based on what you did on 300. Here’s the picture. Tell me if you’re afraid of it and I won’t do it.’ I didn’t have to say a word to him; he looked at the picture and said, ‘Go do it.’ That’s just it with him. He is ready to take these often fun and amusing leaps of faith to try to do something crazy and that makes the work and the relationship fun.” As for Christopher Nolan (Inception) collaborating with Snyder on Superman: Man of Steel, DesJardin remarks, “Let’s just say that my point of view is I think that’s a really good marriage. The two of them being responsible for that project, I think it’s really cool and from the fanboy side of me I’m excited about it.”

The IMAX format is not viewed by John DesJardin as making his job more complicated. “We’ve being dealing with that for a long time and they have their own proprietary ways of zooming things up to the resolution bit that are really good, so that doesn’t impact us too much. 3D definitely does. I keep hoping with each project that we have to do 3D for, that there’s a little more forethought every time because I think it really crunches you at the end of the visual effects process.” As for his attitude towards the 3D technology, DesJardin pragmatically says, “This is the time I’m living in right now. I’ve seen it come and go in the past as a fad but it is sticking for awhile this time. I’ve just got to swim in it.” The Warner Bros. Visual Effects Supervisor views himself as having been fortunate with his career. “I’m in a position that I probably dreamt about being in way back when I was growing up in Michigan...It was always like, ‘Man, I wish I could be in a position to really make that type of imagery and guide it creatively.’ That’s where I’m at right now.”

Many thanks to John DesJardin for taking the time out of his busy schedule for this interview.

Read more of Trevor's interviews with Bryan Hirota and John "DJ" DesJardin as they discuss Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch.

Visit the official website of Velvetelvis Studios.

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Image Conscious: A conversation with visual effects supervisor Dan Glass

Trevor Hogg chats with The Tree of Life visual effects supervisor Dan Glass...

As part of Method Studios’ plan to expand its involvement in making visual effects for movies, Dan Glass was hired to be its Senior Creative Director; the decision paid immediate dividends for the Los Angeles-based VFX facility as Glass was presented with the Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Live-Action Commercial. “It was a different challenge for me last year to try my hand at commercials,” says the British-born Glass who oversaw the production of the 2 minute 15 second television spot called Halo Reach: Deliver Hope. “It was enormous fun, a pleasure to push the creative boundaries on a short schedule, and a tribute to the team I’m now involved with.”

Having to combine artistic sensibilities with technological expertise is not a foreign concept for Dan Glass. “My mother is an artist; still to this day she does a lot of printmaking and painting,” says the native of London, England. “My father is more of the scientist; he was a PHD chemist. In a way it was a great fusion for a lot of what I now do. My father got myself and my brother a computer to play with at home. I would hardly say I was one of those closet computer geeks who locked myself away for days or weeks but it definitely helped that I could gain a familiarity with it and learn some of the fundamentals. Then with my mother’s artistic sensibilities I was constantly encouraged to explore music and the arts; ultimately, that led to me choosing architecture, as a pursuit at college, which has a fantastic combination of skills. Within that you obviously learn about things like light and space, all of which feed into what we do within crafting an image.”

Venturing into the visual effects industry during the early 1990s was like exploring a new frontier for the architecture graduate. “It was a very small field,” recalls Dan Glass. “There was a certain amount of technology and software that existed within television and commercials but it dealt with broadcast video. Equipment that was dedicated to the resolution and level of quality that we needed for film was very scarce.” A lot of creative energy was spent crafting fundamental technical tools. “At the time I joined [the Computer Film Company] all of their machines were custom built; they had figured out how to scan film into the computer and record it back out, and all of the processes in-between. CFC [which became Framestore] had built and designed their equivalent to a Photoshop or a Paintbox. The way we had to work back then was more akin to a computer programmer.” Glass explains, “You had to key in and program every little detail including moving an image to another frame buffer and swapping colour channels – all sorts of the intricate details. Thankfully, now, computers take care of an enormous amount of that as we advance but it was great training. You really knew what was going on and how it was working.”

“My first credit was the very memorable Muppet Treasure Island [1996],” chuckles Glass who was a Visual Effects Compositor on the movie. “After many years on the box as a compositor, I began a freelance supervisor career on the film [Thir13en Ghosts, 2001]. From there I was fortunate enough to follow a freelance pattern that never saw me out of work.” A long-lasting creative partnership for Dan Glass was forged with The Wachowski Brothers when he got the opportunity to serve as a Visual Effects Supervisor on The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (2003). “Those films seem to have gained a slightly dubious reputation which I don’t completely understand. Any sequel that follows such a successful and original first movie is always going to be challenged,” remarks Glass. “They were extremely successful financially as sequels. When I re-watch them I still enjoy them immensely…To me the projects that appeal to me are the ones that are able to keep my interest throughout the whole making of them. That takes a special kind of project. It has to have a pretty rich diversity with what it’s trying to do or it can be very hard to sustain that stamina through what can be a many-year process. The Matrix sequels were pretty insane for the level of ambition, the volume of work and the content we had to produce. There was never a moment when any of us were bored. Every aspect of the technology was challenged at some point in that production. That’s why it’s probably been a career builder or certainly a career experience for so many people.”

“I’ve always kept an open mind,” responds Dan Glass when asked what has enabled him to survive in an industry which is in constant flux. “The universal thing is that you are there to work with and for the director; you determine and translate what it is they’re after and manage that through the restrictions of budget and time.” Another major skill for a successful visual effects supervisor is the ability to corral the companies and the team of artists in a way that brings the project “to a place where you’re getting the best possible result. Every director and every production is a little different. I would doubt that there’s any individual who can fit perfectly into every situation. I think what’s really part of it is trying to find the right pairing.” As to how he would define a great visual effect, Glass states, “I think it’s a lack of self-consciousness to me. I’m trying to use that term to capture a broad range of things. Clearly there are visual effects that standout and could almost be used to sell a movie. I’m not saying that’s wrong if they fit within the context of the story and the film.” Key examples of this for Glass are Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Avatar, and the science fiction tale which established The Wachowski Brothers as international moviemakers. “The thing I thought was extraordinary about the first Matrix was there was an effect that we still talk about to this day; it made such an impression on people but completely made sense within the film.”

“The difficulty of incorporating visual effects into a photoreal environment,” reveals Glass, “is that the closer you get to portraying familiar reality like a human being, the easier it becomes for the viewer to point out discrepancies.” As for the other end of the visual effects spectrum,” he states, “If the stylized reality is clearly defined then that can be a little more straightforward potentially because you’re playing with something that isn’t familiar to the viewer, so you can make some of your own rules.” Contemplating whether the gap between computer-generated imagery and practical effects has lessened, Glass believes that the greatest hindrance is not technology but time and money. “I think the opportunity that we get to really finesse things to that level is very rare.”

“One of the biggest things that we’re likely to see in the next five years is in the increase in render speed,” states Dan Glass. “With the advent of GPU rendering we’ll have these incredibly near photo-real or even photo-real renderings that can be virtually interactive and that in itself will lift some of the artistry…You don’t want artists’ time to be spent waiting for things. The more that process speeds up the more you have time to actually design and develop ideas and push things visually.” Glass is not completely sold on a major visual effect currently sweeping Hollywood. “3D, while I’m not saying it’s only a fad, I think that the mechanism is a little bit more of a gimmick still. Ultimately, its presentation is a cheat on the eyes.” There is also the matter of the image quality. “It is dim because you effectively lose a lot of brightness because you’re wearing polarized lenses, so that cuts out half of the brightness of the image. And with the digital projectors that currently can’t reach the brightness of film projectors, you get even less brightness… There have been some great uses of 3D, but there’s unfortunately been quite a few films I think would have been better without it.” On the other hand, Glass views releasing movies in the IMAX format as being a more genuine pursuit as it is about preserving the visual detail.

The days of having to be more of a computer programmer than an artist are over. “What I find very exciting about the time and place we’re at with visual effects right now is that technology has become a much more malleable form,” enthuses Dan Glass. “As for what the future holds for him, Glass states, “I’m continuing my partnership with Terrence Malick [The Tree of Life] which is a fantastic relationship; I consider him to be a great friend as well. And I will also continue to work with some other filmmakers that I’ve been close to, most notably The Wachowski Brothers; we’ve been developing tests and are working on some things now.”

Many thanks to Dan Glass for taking the time out of his busy schedule for this interview.

Halo Reach: Deliver Hope:


Check out fxguide for an interview with Dan Glass about the making of the Halo Reach commercial.

Vision Quest: The Tree of Life & The Big Lie

Visit the official website for The Tree of Life.

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Image Conscious: A conversation with visual effects supervisor Bryan Hirota

Trevor Hogg talks to Sucker Punch and The Tree of Life visual effects supervisor Bryan Hirota...

One of the recent additions to the staff of Pixomondo is veteran visual effects supervisor Bryan Hirota; he has worked on over 50 films starting with Demolition Man (1993) as a computer graphics designer. “My Mother has a Masters of Fine Arts; she has always done paintings and drawings,” states Hirota. “My Dad has an engineering background. I’ve been exposed to a mixture of both.” The early exposure to the arts and practical analysis has served him well. “You have to be able to approach stuff with an artistic sensibility because you’re trying to create imagery that evokes emotional responses. But at the same time if I am leading a group of artists...I’m also responsible to come up with the technical approaches that we are going to take to solve the problems to achieve the atheistic look we want.”

After graduating from the University of California, San Diego with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, the native Californian found himself working in the early stages of the visual effects industry. “Everyone figured out stuff as we went along,” he informs me. “The industry in L.A. was funny from the early 1990s to 2000; it was like a boom industry… If you could patch a computer you would get a bunch of money. It seemed like a never-ending gravy train. Around 2000, that was when London and Sydney started to be viable places to send work.” The trend has expanded to north of the border fueled by provincial government incentives and the studios wanting to financially benefit from them. “Every company under the sun is opening a facility in Vancouver trying to take advantage of these global tax credits.” There are other reasons for the movement away from Los Angeles. “You’ll have local companies in Australia or in England or in Canada that have grownup by getting more and more work and have become quite savvy at what they do.” Hirota observes, “A big difference now is on an artistic level; you have this opportunity to travel the world and go to work at all these different places. It can be a little daunting depending where you are on the food chain if you don’t want to do that.”

“I’m a visual effects supervisor on the facility side,” remarks Bryan Hirota. “You need to work with your client to fully understand the vision they want to achieve; then you have to pivot 180 degrees inside the facility and work with the team that you have there, whether it be the technicians and or the pure artists, to convey the message of what the director’s vision is and to also be able to construct a workflow and a work methodology that will enable that project to get done.” Keeping an open mind is critical for success. “When you start a new project you really have to evaluate it. I’m sure that the tools and the approaches that you have used before are applicable; if they’re not, quickly identify at the start of the job which ones aren’t. You need to make sure when you get underway that you have tackled all of the creative and technical issues which may come up.”

Questioned as to how he would define a great visual effect, Bryan Hirota answers, “There are certainly the kind of spectacle visual effects that just blow your mind away with the sheer audacity of what’s been attempted and what’s been achieved. The sheer volume of high quality work put into Avatar [2009] is mind-blowing.” Hirota adds, “At the same time there is a film like Inception [2010] which isn’t overtly in your face with their effects as a movie like Avatar but the work is so integral and important to telling that story.” As to what approach is easier when incorporating visual effects, he informs me, “In some ways being given the stylized stuff is easier because no one can say, ‘That doesn’t look right.’...You have less keystones to latch onto when you’re dealing with a stylized world; it’s a tradeoff. You win some you lose some when you decide to go for a style versus reality.” In regards to whether the gap between practical and CG effects has lessened, Hirota believes, “There is a certain physical reality that’s afforded things that are actually real in front of the camera. Will that always be the case? I’m not sure. Up until five, maybe ten years ago spaceships in movies were still always done using models with fiber optics in them. Nobody does that anymore. I don’t know that you can say that the spaceship in the new Star Trek [2009] or the mothership floating around in District 9 [2009] look less real than Star Wars [1977]… I think if you can shoot something with a camera in real life you’re better off doing that because it’s going to look real.”

Past collaborations are a major factor in getting repeat assignments. One such person for Bryan Hirota is Warner Bros. VFX Supervisor John DJ DesJardin whom he met while starting out at Video Image MVFX; he most recently worked with DesJardin on Sucker Punch (2011) and Green Lantern (2011). “If you can find a group of people with whom you have a good relationship…it’s better to bring them back together because doing any one of these movies is really hard. It is hard from start to finish…It is like being in a foxhole in a war. You want to have people down in that foxhole whom you trust.” Contemplating whether there is more artistic license developing an original concept, Hirota says, “I don’t know if you have more creative freedom. I guess in some ways you do because on a sequel you are beholden to what has come before you. On my end of things, I don’t think it effectively matters what the material I’m being handed is. You look for ways to make whatever you’re doing as great as possible. I think the overall challenge is the same.”

Creating visual effects has been made difficult with movies being released in the IMAX format and 3D. “IMAX, because of the increased resolution, exposes more problems,” states Bryan Hirota. “3D, you have more data because you’re dealing with two eyes and then the added burden of, if you’re looking at something in stereo, you can’t hide problems.” As for the future of the visual effects industry, he remarks, “It will only continue to globalize.” Reflecting on how he has been able to survive for so long, Hirota says, “The technology and the tools have evolved so much in the past couple of decades; it is really an ever changing field…I’ve been lucky that there’s been plenty of things for me to do; that has kept me interested enough to be hammering away at this year after year.”

Many thanks to Bryan Hirota for taking the time out of his busy schedule for this interview.

Read more of Trevor's interviews with Bryan Hirota and John "DJ" DesJardin as they discuss Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch.

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Cutting Edge: A conversation with film editor Michael Kahn

Trevor Hogg chats to three-time Academy Award-winning film editor Michael Kahn...

While in California producing some commercials for a New York ad agency, Michael Kahn was offered a job at Desilu, the production company owned and run by television stars Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. “I was the male secretary for a fellow named Dann Cahn,” comments the three-time Academy Award-winning film editor who assisted the editorial supervisor responsible for the celebrated comedy TV series I Love Lucy (CBS, 1951 to 1957). “Eventually, he said, ‘If you want to get ahead in this town you’ve got to get into the union.’ He got me into the union and then I started assisting a fellow by the name of John Woodcock.” The assignment with Woodcock saw Kahn working on his first television series The Adventures of Jim Bowie (ABC, 1956 to 1958). “It was a wonderful time to be in the editing business because we had fourteen or sixteen shows on the air. Some were comedies and some were dramas.”

“A friend of mine, Jerry London, got a chance to work on Hogan’s Heroes [CBS, 1965 to 1971]; he did the pilot. He said, ‘If you come with me as my assistant, after the fifth or sixth show I’ll make you the editor.’” The editorial supervisor for the World War II comedy series was true to his word, and Michael Kahn spent six years editing over 130 episodes and working with a variety of directors. “I was able to learn a lot from that show; it was a career maker for me.” The military sitcom led to his working with Oscar-winner George C. Scott (Patton) who was making his theatrical directorial debut with the drama Rage (1972). “When he was doing his first show, directing and acting, he said to a friend of his who was a writer, ‘Could you get me that editor. I don’t even know his name, who works on Hogan’s Heroes.’ That’s how it went, believe it or not.” Scott and Kahn would go on to collaborate once more for the adventure tale The Savage Is Loose (1974). “What a wonderful human being he was,” states Kahn fondly. “I really enjoyed working with him.”

Comparing the attitude of movie directors with their counterparts in television, Michael Kahn observes, “In the old days, the directors would shoot a big long master, then they would cut and the editor would just lay it in. But when TV started, the TV directors shot a lot of footage because they realized they had more control of the film when they were through with it.” 1976 turned out to be a big year for the film editor as he won an Emmy Award for his work on the ABC TV movie Eleanor and Franklin and he would have a fortuitous collaboration with filmmaker Irvin Kershner and director of photography Owen Roizman on The Return of a Man Called Horse. Both Kershner and Roizman recommended Kahn to a young director looking for a film editor to help him with a science fiction picture. When asked by Steven Spielberg as to whether he was a good editor, the New Yorker said he had no idea but those with whom he worked kept asking him to come back. Kahn got the job and headed off to Mobile, Alabama where he assembled Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

Close Encounters of the Third Kind led to Michael Kahn receiving his first of seven record-setting Oscar nominations for Best Editing, six of them resulting from his work with Steven Spielberg. “I just remember I had a lot of fun,” recalls Kahn of the swashbuckling adventure Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) which awarded him with his first Oscar. Questioned about the opening twenty-minute action sequence, the film editor explains, “In the old days when the trains went across the country they just had that track. They had this long cowcatcher in the front that would push any sheep or cows off the rails. So when a motion picture starts you want to start it with a cowcatcher, something that the audience can grab onto.”

“When I’m through with a film I try to forget everything about it so when I go to the next film I’m not carrying any excess [mental] baggage with me,” reveals Michael Kahn who was lauded with two separate 1988 Oscar nominations for Empire of the Sun and Fatal Attraction; before the latter thriller could be released its concluding scene had to be altered by co-editors Peter Berger and Kahn because of the negative reactions occurring during the test screenings. “It really was an incredible ending but the people were promised by the wife when she said, ‘If you touch my husband again, I’ll kill you.’” Thinking further about the film in which Glenn Close (The Big Chill) plays a psychotic lover spurned by the character portrayed by Michael Douglas (Wall Street), the film editor adds, “They have an argument at one point and I recall she says, ‘I will not be ignored.’ It is a great line in the film. She just wanted to be with him. The audience probably didn’t feel all that much for her because she was taking a wife’s man.”

“We were finishing Jurassic Park [1993] as we were starting to shoot Schindler,” recalls Michael Kahn who had to edit two Steven Spielberg films at the same time. “I took a [work] print of Jurassic Park. Whenever the Lucas people wanted to send us something they sent it over the saucer [satellite dish] and we would see it in Poland.” Kahn states that the 1993 World War II holocaust tale, which led to him being presented with his second Oscar, was the most difficult picture on which he has ever worked. “Schindler’s List was very hard because we were in Poland and we went to the [concentration] camps. The horrific subject matter left the film editor feeling emotionally drained. “When I came home I felt really overtaken with the travail of these people.”

Like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saving Private Ryan (1998) features a dramatic opening sequence; unlike its predecessor, an actual historical event is recreated – the Allied troops landing on the beaches of Normandy during the D-Day invasion. “The first twenty or thirty minutes of Private Ryan had so many different camera techniques being utilized; I had a lot of ways I could go with it,” says Michael Kahn of the dramatic introduction which has been praised for its brutally realistic depiction of battlefield combat. For his efforts on the World War II picture, Kahn was rewarded with his third Oscar.

“You don’t edit from knowledge. You edit from intuition,” says Michael Kahn who views himself as a creative collaborator. “Some directors don’t like you to edit until they are ready to run it with you; then what you have to say is minimal because he tells you what he wants and you sit there and type out the visuals. But that’s not editing… I want to make a contribution to the film.” Kahn acknowledges that the man behind the camera is the one who reigns supreme when it comes to the final decision-making. “You have to get the director’s ideas. We don’t work in a vacuum.” The film editor adds, “I think if the director can have a good point of view and you can be in synch with him it can be wonderful. The only problems I have had in this business, to tell you the truth, are when you go in to try to fix a film… Those directors are really very unhappy with you having to come in to play with their picture.” When I ask him to whom he answers when there is a creative dispute, the post-production specialist replies, “It is up to the producer and the director to mitigate. Some of these fellows want to leave it four hours long. You can’t make an impression on them. They have a set view and they feel that’s the way to go. And that’s the way they should go if they feel that way, but not only is it an art medium it is also a commercial medium.”

The collaboration between Steven Spielberg and Michael Kahn continues to thrive; they will be releasing two pictures in 2011, the motion-capture animated tale The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn and the cinematic adaptation of the World War I drama War Horse. In regards to editing the first installment of the proposed trilogy based on the comic book series created by Hergé, the task was made easier as Kahn received dailies featuring the animated characters and settings. There was one thing that the footage lacked. “It had to go down to Weta in New Zealand and they would put in the mouth and eye movements; with some of the more difficult animation pieces, they would complete it.” Moving onto the War Horse was not a problem for Michael Kahn. “We went to England. He shot the film. We put together here in Hollywood. It worked well.” Though he has not read the book, Kahn did attend the stage play in England. “People responded very well in the theatre. It was nice to see and of course the horses are not real but after awhile you think they’re real.” In explaining the story set during World War I, the New Yorker remarks, “The horse really doesn’t decide where he’s going; it’s just how life takes him. It’s a lot of fun to see. Those English actors are awfully good and so were the horses. The horses were beautifully trained. For an editor there were a lot of match [frame] problems with the horses but the shooting was so good that I got everything I needed.”

In between the two films he worked on with Steven Spielberg, Michael Kahn served as the third editor on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides which is also scheduled to be released in 2011. “I had just finished with Jerry Bruckheimer trying to fix Prince of Persia. They liked what I did and they wanted to keep me around for the start of the Pirates of the Caribbean. So I spent a month or two just helping out the two other editors. They kept me there until Steven started. I never even saw the director. He was in Hawaii and I was here in the States.” Explaining his contribution to the fourth installment of the high seas adventure franchise being helmed by Rob Marshall (Chicago), Kahn states, “We would give him a first run through of a sequence; he had someone there who would make changes in Hawaii. Then it came back to us; we showed it to Jerry Bruckheimer who accepted or didn’t accept the changes.”

As for future projects with Steven Spielberg such as the biopic about Abraham Lincoln, Michael Kahn says, “It is my understanding they are going to start the film, just like they say in trades, at the end of this year which is September or October… If it goes I will work on it with Steven.” In regards to his also working on Robopocalypse, the cinematic adaptation of the science fiction story penned by novelist Daniel H. Wilson, the film editor remarks, “I was told in the trades that he was going to do that right after Lincoln which would also be an overlap.” The possibility of his having to assemble two films at the same time does not unnerve Kahn. “I think our minds have a capacity to do more than one thing at a time.”

When it comes to impressive movies he has recently seen, Michael Kahn mentions Blue Valentine which stars Michelle Williams (The Station Agent) and Ryan Gosling (Fracture) playing a couple whose marriage falls apart. “It’s no fun seeing that picture but you want to see it; the acting is great.” Another one that stands out to the film editor is the psychological thriller Black Swan with Natalie Portman (Beautiful Girls) portraying a professional ballerina. “You see the unraveling of this woman. This is not what I would call entertainment but it is something people can relate to because it hits a nerve of truth. It was the same thing with Schindler; people want more reality, especially, the older people.” What has yet to impress Kahn is the current 3D technology. “The picture is much duller. It can’t capture enough light. I was watching Avatar and I took my glasses off a number of times and I was able to see the colours so much better. That’s a problem they have to solve.”

“You should see as many pictures as you can,” advises Michael Kahn to aspiring film editors. “If you like them, you ask, ‘Why did this picture work so well? What elements in it made it work so well?’ If it’s a bad picture, you ask, ‘Why didn’t it work? What would I have done as an editor to make it work?’ But that’s after you’ve seen the picture.” Having completely converted to computer editing, Kahn observes, “The editing hasn’t changed because we’re doing it digitally. Editing is editing. The decision of what to do takes the same amount of time, except, we get there quickly.” Contemplating his career, the film editor says, “What have been very important for me over the years have been my assistants… They have been wonderful because you don’t have time to answer the phones. You don’t have time to do the mechanics of the editing room. And if you have an assistant who can take care of all of that then your only responsibility is to sit and edit.”

Many thanks to Michael Kahn for taking the time out of his busy schedule for this interview.

For more, be sure to check out Trevor's article "Editor Michael Kahn reflects on his work with Spielberg" from Post Magazine.

American Cinema Editors Lifetime Achievement Award Tribute to Michael Kahn...


Filmmaker Edgar Wright has posted his thoughts on the tribute video, which you can read here.

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

The Weir Way: Russell Boyd and Lee Smith Talk About Peter Weir

Continuing our Peter Weir Blogathon, Trevor Hogg chats to film editor Lee Smith and cinematographer Russell Boyd about their experiences working with the acclaimed director...

Although he had not made a film since the seafaring Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), internationally acclaimed director Peter Weir had no trouble recruiting willing collaborators for his latest effort The Way Back (2010). “Since 1975 I have shot more than thirty movies,” states Oscar-winning Australian cinematographer Russell Boyd from his home in Sydney. “I enjoy the work and I enjoy making films but I would have to say having done six films with Peter he does spoil you a little bit more than other projects [do].” The feeling of admiration felt by Russell is mutually expressed when I talk to two-time Academy Award-nominated film editor Lee Smith who is currently working on a project in London, England. When I bring up the subject of The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) and the casting of Linda Hunt as the dwarf cameraman Billy Kwan, I get a glimpse of the youthful enthusiasm he would have displayed three decades ago as a twenty-year old movie industry rookie. “Genius piece of casting,” declares Lee without hesitation. “I was a first year editor on that one also did the sound, working in the Philippines on location. I was a young guy and it spurred me to work with him as many times as I could. It was a fantastic experience.”

Russell Boyd agrees with Lee’s assessment of the daring decision made by Peter Weir to cast Linda Hunt who received an Oscar for her performance. “It was an extraordinary bit of casting by Peter. He actually had somebody else picked out for the role but for some reason he didn’t think it was going to work out. It was quite a last minute thing. He disappeared and flew to Hollywood. We were about four or five weeks out of shooting which is a very intense time… A few days later they had recast that role and Linda was going to play it; a woman playing a man but it certainly worked out well.” The political thriller which stars Mel Gibson as an ambitious Australian journalist in 1960s Jakarta, Indonesia, and Sigourney Weaver as a British intelligent agent left a lasting impression on the film’s leading lady. “I worked with Sigourney on a small film in New York called Company Man [2000]; she said to me, ‘Peter was the reason I continued acting.’ She felt in such good directorial hands with him...I thought that was a great mark of respect she paid Peter.” Explaining Weaver’s comment further to me, Russell says, “I think when actors work with Peter they respond to the fact they are working with somebody really great who can steer their characters.” The cinematographer goes on to give an example of the subtle and crafty approach employed by the director. “Peter will often leave his video village and come over to an actor and just say, ‘Look try this. Just think that. Just put that little thing in there or do something or the other.’ He just speaks gently to the actors and they respond. He is probably one of the great masters of getting a good performance from an actor… There is a great ambience on the set and Peter exploits it; he talks to his actors as one professional to another.”

The two pictures of which Russell Boyd is really proud are Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Gallipoli (1981) for they put early Australia on the cinematic map. The strange period tale about a group of schoolgirls who vanish upon entering a mysterious rock formation served as the first collaboration between the director and the cinematographer. “Peter has always liked to experiment, using different lenses and heights in getting a shot, and with the speed of the camera,” remarks Russell. “He likes [to use] slow motion a lot just to heighten one little mannerism or a little movement. In Picnic at Hanging Rock when the girls were crossing the river we shot in thirty-two frames which gives it that slight motion effect.” Gallipoli is a World War I drama which stars Mel Gibson and Mark Lee as two friends who tragically end up on a Turkish battlefield. “I don’t think Peter set out to make a war film but of course it is about war. He was very clever in the way where the characters told the story instead of it being a big battle epic… Essentially, it was also a story about Australia coming of age, which it did. A lot of the young guys went off to wars in some of those early scenes thinking it is going to be a picnic, it is going to be a great time over there but of course the way it was they were getting fired upon with real bullets and a lot of them lost their lives. I think it woke Australia up from a slumber from the Victorian-era life and that is certainly part of Peter’s story as well.” A particular sequence that stands out to the both of us is when the stranded Gibson and Lee have to cross alien landscape of the Outback. “That was Lake Torrens in South Australia which is a salt lake and it hadn’t rain out there for years and years; it is one of my favourite scenes in that film. Those scenes really set Peter up as a masterful storyteller. Just the way he used that eerie, odd, strange location – got some great visuals to enhance the story of the two guys crossing the desert.” As for the dramatic concluding shot, the native of Victoria, Australia informs me, “Peter may have been inspired by [war photographer] Robert Capa but we didn’t actually talk about it. I know he wanted to finish the film with that freeze frame and it is a great ending.”

“Peter likes to do a lot of research and loves to share it with the necessary people so usually six to eight months before, we start on the prep,” says Russell Boyd. “In fact with Master and Commander because it took so long to get going, I think I was talking to him for eighteen months before it started.” The Napoleonic war epic provided film editor Lee Smith with the opportunity to take over the reins from his mentor William Anderson for the first time. “In Master and Commander we always stayed on The Surprise,” remarks Lee. “We never ever jumped to the French boat until we actually boarded [the vessel]. I thought that was really cool. A different film, for example, would have had you suddenly in a scene in the French boat with the French captain getting the news about spotting The Surprise on the horizon in subtitles, and they would have all run up and looked through their telescopes but Peter said he wanted to stay with the guys on the boat.” In comparing the film with Peter Weir’s latest effort which takes place out in the Siberian wilderness, Lee observes, “I would say The Way Back was somewhat more challenging because… there are only so many glorious vistas you can cut into a movie and you need to make sure you can keep the audience with you as you’re going through that journey. Whereas Master and Commander was probably more dialogue driven, and held in the confines of the ship, which is still a very interesting visual place to be.” The Sydney-born film editor adds, “Each film has its own unique way of coming together… With Peter’s they are always a visual feast.”

“If I’m involved I can throw in my ten cents worth as to why shoot morning or night in that location or maybe not use that location but another one for another reason,” says Russell Boyd. “It’s not a collaboration, it’s probably a gentlemen’s agreement when we settle on something. But Peter always has great ideas about why a particular location is going to be useful for his stories. I would have to have a damn good reason to get him to change it but he’ll certainly listen if I pipe up well enough.” Weir is not adverse to the idea of seeking advice from those around him. “Peter does like to get some feedback because he doesn’t feel that he’s the auteur filmmaker, he’s not doing it on his own.” Russell amends his comment by saying, “Nevertheless, I for one and I think most of the people who work with him, trust his judgment so completely that nobody would ever argue with him and say, ‘No, no, no! We can’t do it that way! This is the way we have to do it.’ You just wouldn’t do it to Peter.”

“Peter is always incredibly conscious of his story and he does change it frequently,” reveals Russell Boyd. “One of his approaches when shooting a scene is not to do many takes but to do more different setups which gives him a lot more flexibility in the cutting room.” Lee Smith generally finds himself left alone in the edit suite while the principle photography is taking place. “Mainly Peter would only watch sequences if I had any concerns about them,” states Lee. “On The Way Back he did watch a couple of chunks of the film but sometimes that’s just if time permits. Generally speaking he concentrates on keeping focused on what is coming and what he is going to do next.” Weir’s tendency to experiment with a movie soundtrack by incorporating noises such as earthquake tremors and submarine sonar pings appeals to the film editor who is also a sound designer. “He has a lot of ideas and is very interested in creating moods through sounds which makes him a very exciting director to work with.”

“I think a director owes it to his audience to entertain them but also to observe the honesty of the story,” believes Russell Boyd. “He can’t treat the audience with disdain. He has to respect them all the time. One thing I know about Peter is he does think a lot about the audience and how they might react to a particular scene, which has helped me in my approach to cinematography.” Boyd goes on to make a startling revelation, “For a short time he thought The Way Back may not have gotten a big theatrical release… We were going through the laboratory looking at a print and he said it may go straight to DVD. I was horrified. Fortunately, it has gathered a lot more interest since then. I think the [world premiere at the] Telluride Festival gave it a boost.” The cinematographer recognizes, however, that the climate in the movie industry has changed. “There is now a huge sway to ultra visual effects films with spaceships and aliens from different planets; all sorts of visual trickery which will get eighteen to twenty-four year olds into the cinema. I think what he feels, I don’t know if he is right or wrong, is that the studios are banking on those types of films more and more… There is always a market for very small market films – five to ten million dollars… The Way Back is not really a huge audience film therefore it was hard for him to get $30 million out of somebody to make it.” Russell Boyd is very quick to point out, “Peter is not in it for the glory… He would never take a film if he is not convinced that it is something he should do.”

Many thanks to both Russell Boyd and Lee Smith for taking time out of their busy schedules for these interviews. Read more here...

Picture Perfect: A conversation with cinematographer Russell Boyd
Cutting Edge: A conversation with film editor Lee Smith

Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Cutting Edge: A conversation with film editor Lee Smith

Continuing our Peter Weir Blogathon, Trevor Hogg chats to Academy Award-nominated film editor Lee Smith...

Lee Smith began his career in the movie industry as a sound designer for internationally respected directors such as Phillip Noyce (Dead Calm), Jane Campion (The Piano), George Miller (Lorenzo’s Oil), and Peter Weir (Green Card). “I was fortunate enough to be working for a company that would let me do sound and picture work,” Lee informs me. “For quite some time I did start to specialize in sound, and with me moving back into picture I carried those skills with me.” Graduation day for the Australian as a film editor arrived when Peter Weir gave him the responsibility of assembling Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003); the trust was well placed as the native of Sydney received an Oscar nomination for Best Editing.

“As I work on cutting X-Men: First Class [2011] all those sound skills are needed because the [film editing] systems we are working on now can continuously create moods and atmospheres right from the inception of a scene,” says Lee Smith, “I see sound and picture as being impossible to separate because, as in life, everything we perceive is visual and audible.” The film editor, who received his second Academy Award nomination for Best Editing in recognition of his work on The Dark Knight (2008), tries to keeps an open mind. “Each scene is its own beast. If you can pull it off without showing implicit violence it can be a successful way of creating a scene. I also believe what you think you saw can be much more horrific.” Lee tries to remain objective in the edit suite. “My theory is that the longer you can resist putting music on a movie, the more you analyze and the more brutal you are on the images. Music is the great glue that can stick sequences together.”

After working on three consecutive films for British director Christopher Nolan, Lee Smith jumped at the opportunity to collaborate again with his fellow countryman Peter Weir. “The great thing with films is that you can go on a journey with the people that you are interested in watching. You almost feel a part of them,” remarks Smith who assembled the footage for The Way Back (2010), a World War II prison escape and survival epic. Financial and weather troubles delayed the $30 million production, causing a scheduling conflict for the in-demand post-production talent. “With Inception [2010], I came on to it a few months into the shoot because Peter’s one got pushed back; Chris Nolan very generously agreed to let me finish his film.”

Costing five times the budget of The Way Back, the dream within a dream heist thriller became a Hollywood blockbuster juggernaut grossing $824 million worldwide. “A lot of what you were seeing in Inception, what I am sure people were thinking must have been matte paintings and all manners of CG [computer graphics], were practical [effects],” reveals Lee Smith. “Of course there are CG elements in Inception. Paris doesn’t turn on its head for anybody… If you can capture reality and then augment it, it always looks better than a hundred percent creation, in my opinion.” The gold standard for utilizing practical effects remains a classic helmed by Stanley Kubrick, which served as inspiration for the gravity-defying hallway sequence in the picture. “The rotating sets in 2001 [1968], obviously we’re great fans of that.” He adds, “Kubrick had a great vision and [made] great use of wide shots. Both Chris [Nolan] and Peter [Weir] are into that.” When I tell him that my favourite scene occurs when the character played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt goes about setting the explosive charges in the elevator shaft, Lee chuckles, “That was very much like a space movie.” As for the reasoning behind Nolan choosing to have action-sequence dreams rather than surreal ones, the film editor believes, “I don’t think that thinking was driven by budget only. That was really just the film he wanted to make. He wanted to make a complex mind-bending film that would appeal to a massive audience and be entertaining, which is what I think we all want.”

X-Men: First Class sees Lee Smith collaborating with a new director for the first time since he teamed with Christopher Nolan for Batman Begins (2005). “Matthew Vaughn has his own unique view,” observes the Australian who is co-editing the comic book superhero film about the rise and fall of the friendship between Professor X and Magneto. “I’m not seeing much of him yet as we’re still shooting.” As for the performance of Jennifer Lawrence who is a major contender for Best Actress at the 2011 Academy Awards because of her role in Winter’s Bone (2010), Lee remarks, “She is very good in this.” He also tells me, “It’s a big film being done in a short amount of time. It’s going to be intense but so far what I’ve got has been very good. Everyone is happy with it. So fingers crossed.”

Questioned about his involvement with The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Lee Smith answers, “I’m booked to start that on May 1st.” Upon mentioning the casting rumour that Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz might have a part in the highly anticipated conclusion of trilogy helmed by Christopher Nolan, Lee quickly responds, “Honestly, I don’t know anything about it and that’s how it always is with him. In the fullness of time I’ll get a script. Secrecy with his projects is paramount.” As for whether or not he will be helping Zack Snyder, who was selected by Nolan to direct the tentatively titled Superman: Man of Steel (2012), the film editor tells me, “I doubt it because I don’t actually know when that’s one going to go. Probably, the director will pick his own editor and that’s always a good idea.”

“At the end of the day movies are expensive to produce and basically they do have to make money,” reflects Lee Smith. “It depends on how brave the people are who are funding the projects. Some of the best films you could name were probably films that weren’t at first look guaranteed to be huge successes; someone took a risk and someone took a punt and said, ‘You know what? Conventional wisdom doesn’t think this is going to be a huge runaway success but I like it. I think it’s got a chance.’ And they do it. We’re in an age of economic rationalism and I think it’s killed a lot of our thinking.” In regards to Inception and The Way Back being strong contenders for Best Picture at the 2011 Academy Awards, Lee remarks, “I would be very happy to see that happen. They couldn’t be more completely different movies but I wish them both well.”

Many thanks to Lee Smith for taking the time out of his busy schedule for this interview.

Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Picture Perfect: A conversation with cinematographer Russell Boyd

Continuing our Peter Weir Blogathon, Trevor Hogg chats to Academy Award-winning cinematographer Russell Boyd...

Checking the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) I was surprised to find that Oscar-winning cinematographer Russell Boyd was listed with sixty-one production credits. “[Every year] since the mid 70s through the 80s and early 90s I would often do two pictures and sometimes even start work on a third one when I was working in Australia,” explains the sixty-six year old who has worked on everything from the eerily apoplectic The Last Wave (1975) to the Hollywood slapstick comedy Liar Liar (1997). The native of Victoria did take some time off from feature filmmaking when his wife gave birth to twin boys; deciding to stay closer to home, Russell worked on numerous ads. “In any month you can have quite a number of different challenges photographically when you’re shooting commercials, and one of my beliefs has always been, ‘How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.’ I think cinematographers should shoot every day of their life just about. I think experience is very important too because it enables you to throw behind you the technical side, which lets you get on with the kinetic side of it. Early on there is a big technical monster you’ve got to harness with photography… Once you’ve come to terms with that and got comfortable with it, that is when you really can push yourself visually.”

“I think my reputation has become, rightly or wrongly, [that of] a landscapist,” observes Russell Boyd. “A lot of the early films like Picnic at Hanging Rock [1975] and other ones like Burke & Wills [1985] were out in the middle of Australia.” The cinematographer is fascinated by the various ways he can dramatically manipulate light. “One of the things I love in terms of light is what we call back light. In other words when the sun is not behind the camera but the camera is shooting toward the sun and the light is coming from the back. It produces a great halo of light around people’s heads; it’s a very painterly device that Impressionist painters used. So we did have a look at the work of a lot of early Australian Impressionist painters and that is when I decided to shoot much of [the exteriors in] Picnic at Hanging Rock in back light.” Contemplating as to whether he has a signature shooting approach, Russell states, “If I have a style at all it is not in the selection of camera but in the lighting; you would have to call it naturalistic. I hate seeing anything on film where there is an obvious light being used to light the scene. I like to keep it as natural and as part of the environment as possible.” A major lighting test for the Australian occurred while filming the large principle cast in The Way Back (2010), his latest collaboration with fellow countryman and acclaimed director Peter Weir. “It is always a challenge if you have six key actors in a scene at the same time, particularly if they are moving from one position to another… By the second or third rehearsal the actors are starting to really feel where they want to be in a particular moment in a scene or in a shot. You then figure out the best place to put the key light, which you might call the main light which is lighting the set, in a position where it won’t intrude or look unnatural.”

“We the camera team and the other departments often suffer the harshest of environments to work in,” tells Russell Boyd who worked in Bulgaria, Morocco, and India during a principle photography period which lasted sixty-three days for The Way Back. The World War II prison escape and survival epic stars Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe), Colin Farrell (Tigerland), Ed Harris (Appaloosa), and Saoirse Ronan (Hanna). “We’d come back at the end of the day to see our dailies and there [would be] tea, biscuits and a glass of wine [waiting for us].” What troubled Russell more than the desert heat of Morocco was the uncomfortable cold climate encountered in Bulgaria. “We certainly had to wrap the cameras up in protective plastic housing from heaters and all sorts of things like that. Also, when special effects were blowing snow at us it would cover the lenses so we had to take precautions to keep the lenses clear of the snow and dry; between takes we had to wipe down the equipment a lot.”

The most difficult assignment for the cinematographer resulted in his being lauded with an Oscar in 2004. “[Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World] was probably one of the most difficult films I ever worked on. One, it was big budget and two, it was very complex, particularly in terms of special effects. I differentiate between special effects and visual effects because there weren’t a lot of digital effects in it. There were an awful lot of mechanical special effects in it, water explosions, all that fun. I remember, in the last six weeks in prep all the department heads would spend two weeks at the big table in the art department and we go through what still needed to be dealt with and Peter would always be there for two hours and then he would go off to do more casting. I remember about six weeks before we started shooting we all looked at each other and asked, ‘How are we going to make this picture?’ because there were so many variables… all the intricacies from the sets being, the top deck, the gun deck, the canons… all those different elements had to be extremely thought through,” he adds, regarding the seafaring Napoleonic tale where a British warship helmed by Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) plays a game of cat and mouse with a French naval adversary. “The most memorable for the shooting of it was when they [Aubrey and the crew of The Surprise] were going through the storm just before going around Cape Horn.” Upon receiving my belated congratulations for being presented with an Academy Award, Russell confesses, “It came as a little bit of a surprise… You don’t become a DP [Director of Photography] with the major hope of winning an Oscar. During Master and Commander I never considered I would win one, or get nominated for that matter, but Peter’s film was such an epic it couldn’t go under the radar.”

An intriguing shot occurs in Picnic at Hanging Rock, which was the first time Russell Boyd collaborated with Peter Weir; camera operator and future Oscar-winning cinematographer John Seale, with the help of a tripod, rotated the photographic device a full 360 degrees. “We started off with the girls, panned around and saw a lot of nature, and tilting up a bit to where they were continuing their journey,” fondly recalls Russell who counts the story about vanishing schoolgirls at the turn of the century in Australia as one of his proudest cinematic achievements. “Where it took thirty seconds on the screen it could have taken fifteen or twenty shots to progress that journey a little. It was a masterful way of doing it.” A more complicated scene to assemble occurs in the political thriller The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) featuring Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver; the movie production crew and cast had to leave the Philippines without completing the principle photography. “The scene where the rain started was shot in a big fishing village near Manila. Then they ran to the car. Then the next scene is them sitting in the car. We had to leave Manila because there were death threats from some Muslim groups so we finished shooting it inside the car on the Northern beaches of Sydney. We just obliterated the windscreen with rain. We have to resort to all sorts of trickery at times.”

Soon after The Year of Living Dangerously, Russell Boyd worked again with the mischievous Mel Gibson. “One practical joke I remember with Diane Keaton on Mrs. Soffel [1984]. There was a scene where she was walking through the jail… she was suppose to brush into him and fall over into his arms but what he did was to put one of those silly red plastic nose things on just before the take and it really scared her.” The cinematographer believes that there is method to the actor’s on-set antics. “Mel loves to have a joke right up until the camera starts rolling because he doesn’t seem to like to spend a lot of time thinking about his character. He likes to just jump right into it.” Teaming with Bruce Beresford, Russell had an opportunity to lens an Oscar-winning performance. “[With] Robert Duvall, particularly in Tender Mercies [1983], I used to sit there during a take and think, ‘Oh, God this guy really knows what he is doing.’ I don’t think he was all that easy to work with. I think he and Bruce had a few differences but he is a great actor.” Russell tells me, “A mark of a great actor is that they can play different roles.” There is also a career pitfall that needs to be avoided. “Some actors just take on too much work and don’t give the audience a rest from them. If I was an actor I would be very, very careful about doing that. Lets face it [however] actors need to eat as well so sometimes we all take on projects that aren’t necessarily great for our careers.”

For his cinematic body of work, which has seen him join forces with acclaimed filmmakers such as Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, Gillian Armstrong, Norman Jewison, and Ron Shelton, Russell Boyd was presented with the Australian Film Institute Raymond Longford Award for significant contribution to Australian filmmaking in 1988.

Many thanks to Russell Boyd for taking the time out of his busy schedule for this interview and for supplying the images in the article.

Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.