In Contention

Tag: Tech Support

  • TECH SUPPORT: ‘Inception’ dominates below the line

    So, the morning after a terrible prediction record at this year’s Oscars, I’ll try to make some sense of what the Academy told us, and what it means for the crafts artists we got to know along the circuit this year.

    As the evening went on, many people began to wonder if “The Social Network” would triumph in Best Picture. While Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall managed to take Best Film Editing (on their second nomination), the very deserved win for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross in Best Original Score was somewhat surprising. The work trumped Alexandre Desplat for “The King’s Speech,” despite the latter film’s wins in the major categories. Desplat, with four nominations under his belt, could now be considered due, I think.  (Alas, Tom Hooper’s later win for Best Director removed doubts about the Best Picture winner.)

    The Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects categories unsurprisingly went to “Inception,” making Oscar winners of Nolan’s usual crew of Lora Hirschberg, Gary Rizzo, Ed Novick, Richard Kind, Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, and company. I congratulate them and wish them the best for “The Dark Knight Rises.”

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part two

    Yesterday we began our final look at the 10 crafts categories.  Check out part one here.  Today, the conclusion.  Meanwhile, you can find my final predictions in all categories here.

    Best Music (Original Score)

    Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, despite their atypical approach to film music composition, are very much contenders in this race. Having won the BFCA award and Golden Globe for their work on “The Social Network,” they must be taken seriously. The fact remains, however, that this is not a typical Oscar-winning score.

    Alexandre Desplat has had an amazing run since he broke onto the American scene in 2003 with “Girl With a Pearl Earring.” Four Oscar nominations later, it seems he is poised to win his first statuette for another Colin Firth film, “The King’s Speech.” Being behind the Best Picture frontrunner is a huge advantage. Moreover, its subtle elegance managed to win the BAFTA. Even so, a win is hardly assured as subtlety is actually not frequently awarded here.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part one

    So this is it. Over the last seven-plus months here at Tech Support, we have tried to illuminate and analyze the craft races as they unfolded. On Sunday, the winners will be revealed, ushering some new faces into Oscar’s club.  And indeed, I expect the vast majority of the winners to make their first trip to the podium.

    I’ll be breaking down each field in a two-parter.  Check back tomorrow for the final five categories, but for now…

    Best Art Direction

    As is the case in many categories, “The King’s Speech” is, to me, the safe bet for the win here. A royal period piece and likely Best Picture winner would be difficult to beat in any year. But in all fairness, this is in many ways not a typical “royal” winner in a category where style triumphs over substance.

    Production Designer Eve Stewart (11 years after her first nomination for “Topsy-Turvy”), along with set decorator Judy Farr, immaculately filled many of the film’s sets (despite late-breaking news of one location) with intimate details that feel very much in tune with the characters. A guild win also shows industry support.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: ‘Toy Story 3’ composer and songwriter Randy Newman

    When the Oscar nominations were announced last month, composer Alan Menken almost tied Randy Newman for third-most nominations among living artists.  But Newman inched away, nabbing his own nomination for the song “We Belong Together” (listen) from “Toy Story 3” and thereby maintaining a firm grip on the designation.

    It was Newman’s 20th nomination to date, a healthy run by anyone’s measure.  But it was extra special given his recent history with Pixar Animation Studios, and the voice he has given to the “Toy Story” franchise since its 1995 beginnings.

    He was able to put a bow on the series in his own special way, and should he win the Oscar next weekend, it’ll be his second trophy.  His first also came for a Pixar entry, “Monsters, Inc.,” which netted him the gold in this very same category.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The makeup of ‘Barney’s Version,’ ‘The Way Back’ and ‘The Wolfman’

    As we have noted a number of times, the makeup branch is one of the Academy’s most independently minded. While many people have criticized them in the past for bestowing the moniker “Oscar nominee” on many mediocre (or worse) films, the makeup artists clearly seem to take the work into account regardless of perceived film “quality.”

    This year, they proved their originality once again by nominating three films which did not manage nominations in any other category. The graceful and realistic aging in “Barney’s Version,” the ultra-realistic results of a battle with nature in “The Way Back” and the transformation of Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins (not to mention a plethora of blood) in “The Wolfman” made up the slate.

    I recently spoke with makeup department heads from all three of the nominated films – “Barney’s Version”’s Adrien Morot, “The Way Back”’s Edouard Henriques (nominated with Greg Funk and Yolanda Touessing), and “The Wolfman”’s Rick Baker (nominated with Dave Elsey).

    For Baker, a 12-time nominee and six-time winner, the journey on “The Wolfman” began very early. “I did something I don’t normally do,” he says. “When I heard Universal was going to do a remake of ‘The Wolfman,’ I kind of begged. I said, ‘I really have to do this movie.’ It didn’t make for the best negotiating position but I was one of the first hired on the film.”  The chance to update his own take on the genre 30 years earlier in “An American Werewolf in London” was clearly too difficult to pass up.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Analyzing the nominees

    So the 83rd Annual Academy Award nominations were finally announced this week, and I did fairly well in handicapping the nominees. Outside of Best Sound Mixing, I never missed more than one nominee in a category. Unfortunately, there were no categories where I scored 100% (apart from Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay). Oh well.

    The massive overall tally for “The King’s Speech” resulted from a plethora of nominations in the crafts fields. “True Grit” and “Inception” got all but one plausible tech nomination (with one very notable exception for each, discussed below). “TRON Legacy”’s tally, on the other hand, has got to be considered a disappointment as must, to a lesser extent, those of “Black Swan” and “127 Hours.” The complete shut-out for “Shutter Island” was also somewhat of a surprise, but other branches saw fit to make Oscar nominees of some unlikely titles.

    Regardless, it was nice to see many deserving crafts artists get their due. With the throat-clearing out of the way, I’ll now give short reactions to – and previews of – each below-the-line field.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part two

    Yesterday I began a final look at the crafts categories. Today, a look at the four remaining fields: Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Film Editing.

    BEST ART DIRECTION

    The precursors of the BFCA, BAFTA and Art Directors Guild have been fairly consistent in citing four titles in this category. Last year’s winner, Robert Stromberg, seems poised to dip again for creation of a 3D world on Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.” Eve Stewart, on the other hand, will likely be returning to the fold after an 11 year absence for “The King’s Speech.”

    Guy Hendrix Dyas and Jess Gonchor also have got all necessary precursors, and have fashioned surefire Best Picture nominees, in “Inception” and “True Grit” respectively. It is true that they have had difficulty being nominated in the past but Gonchor has also never had such an Oscar-friendly opportunity, whereas the impressive, integral-to-the-story nature of Dyas’s work has been especially embraced by the precursors.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part one

    It seems hard to believe that it’s been more than six months since I wrote this year’s introductory Tech Support column ( a dissection of the art direction race). Much has changed since then, naturally, as we are less than a week away from the big day when we find out the nominees for the Oscars this year. Today, I take a final look at the music categories, sound categories and the two categories that have been narrowed down to seven finalists – Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup.

    BEST MAKEUP

    In this utterly bizarre category, virtually any combination of the seven finalists would fail to surprise me as the final three. That said, I’ve had the same top two predicted all year and see no reason to change now: “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Wolfman.” The former had massive box office and very noticeable makeup, whereas the latter is exactly the sort of movie that tends to score here and nowhere else.

    Logic may put “True Grit” or “The Fighter” next in line due to their Best Picture contender status. But as much as these films are loved, they don’t have as showy makeup as the other finalists, and this is a category that often doesn’t care how films are received overall.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The construction of ‘The Social Network’

    One of the immediately striking things about Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for “The Social Network” is its assemblage, the manner in which he chose to tell the story with cascading elements of the narrative. And when you bring on a meticulous craftsman like David Fincher to direct a film already detailed in its larval stage, you can bet that the attention to each moving part and how it fits into the whole will be amplified.

    So it is that the construction of “The Social Network” — and the contributions from its below-the-line crew toward those ends — could be the most defining aspect of a film dominating the precursor awards circuit to date.  I recently spoke to film editors Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, sound mixers Ren Klyce and Michael Semanick and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to discuss those various moving parts, as well as their collaboration with a filmmaker who shows great respect for their art forms.

    Wall and Baxter don’t go back all that far with Fincher, believe it or not. They’re first pass on one of his films was 2007’s “Zodiac,” which was largely Wall’s film but Baxter was brought on to help out a bit. “Once I was in there I was difficult to move,” Baxter says.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The design of ‘Alice in Wonderland’

    Tim Burton and Johnny Depp may well be poised to go down in film history as one of the famous actor-director duets.  Seven collaborations to date have delighted audiences for the past 20 years. They have also earned 11 Oscar nominations and four wins.  Their latest, “Alice in Wonderland,” exemplifies how far along they’ve come in the eyes of the public with its worldwide gross of more than $1 billion.

    At the same time, the film was immensely reliant — as all Burton films are — on its design elements.  Many of the artists who created those designs are now in the thick of this season’s Oscar race, and I recently had the opportunity to speak to three of them: production designer Robert Stromberg, visual Effects supervisor Ken Ralston and makeup artist Valli O’Reilly.

    Each certainly commented on being aware of the immense importance that his or her work would have to the project. That having been said, Ralston notes, “I had done it for so long that I wasn’t panicking. I thought it could be a blast. It is daunting when you read the script, because you realize the whole thing, in one way or another, is going to be visual effects. It’s a huge deal but with so many talented folks on board, you just have to trust them.”

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: ‘True Grit’ production designer Jess Gonchor

    We’re wrapping things up today with a final look at the below-the-line of Joel and Ethan Coen’s “True Grit” and a chat with production designer Jess Gonchor.

    You might recall our interview with Gonchor from last year when he mentioned how he first came to work with the Coens (on 2007’s “No Country for Old Men”).  The brothers had been very impressed with what they saw on Bennett Miller’s “Capote” and liked what he brought to the table.  Gonchor had already shown his value as art director on films like “Kate & Leopold” and “The Last Samurai,” but “Capote” was his first stab at being the head of the art department as production designer.

    Four films later the collaboration is still going strong as Gonchor has settled in nicely with the Coens’ family of craftsmen and women, and “True Grit” might be the apex of that work so far.  Any designer would delight in working on a western, but the attention to detail in Gonchor’s work, and particularly in the work of his set decorator, Nancy Haigh, is truly wonderful.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: ‘True Grit’ composer Carter Burwell

    Nearing the end of our week-long series of interviews with the below-the-line talent of Joel and Ethan Coen’s “True Grit,” we’re talking today with the film’s composer Carter Burwell.

    Of the entire Coen crafts family, Burwell is one of the true veterans.  He goes way back with the brothers — all the way back, in fact, to their directorial debut, “Blood Simple,” in 1984.  Save for “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” which featured an assemblage of pre-existing musical selections, Burwell has contributed an original score to each of their films.

    With “True Grit,” the task was unique despite music having always been quite integral to the genre.  Rather than whip up a completely original score from beginning to end, Burwell and the Coens decided to base a lot of the music on hymns of the period (though there is still a good deal of original music in the film — music unceremoniously ruled ineligible for Oscar consideration by the music branch of the Academy this year).

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: ‘True Grit’ cinematographer Roger Deakins

    The Coen brothers’ “True Grit” opens nationwide today.  And we’re continuing right along with our daily look at the below-the-line talent of the film with director of photography Roger Deakins.

    Deakins has been with the Coens for nearly 20 years, going all the way back to “Barton Fink” in 1991.  It’s fair to say his style and tendencies as an artist have become married to the Coens’, forging an identifiable texture to their work together.

    But a lot of that general stylish flourish took a backseat on “True Grit,” allowing for a much more simplified rendering of the film’s imagery.  I’ve talked to Deakins a couple of times over the years and he’s rarely one to pour sound bytes onto an interview, but it’s always a great and enlightening discussion regardless.  I keep linking to last year’s interview with these guys regarding “A Serious Man” to hopefully shed more light on their process working with the Coens.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: ‘True Grit’ sound mixer Skip Lievsay

    Continuing today with our week-long look at the below-the-line elements of the Coen brothers’ “True Grit,” we’re chatting with sound re-recording mixer Skip Lievsay.

    Along with Carter Burwell, Lievsay is one of only two of the individuals we talked to who goes all the way back to “Blood Simple” with the Coens.  What that says to me is that these filmmakers have maintained a sense of sonic consistency in their films over the years and put plenty of thought into the overall sound experience.

    Lievsay was finally recognized by the Academy in 2007 for his and his collaborators’ work on “No Country for Old Men,” an understated piece of work that was fortunately not overshadowed completely by large scale productions that year.  This year he delighted in tackling one of his favorite genres: the western.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: ‘True Grit’ costume designer Mary Zophres

    In lieu of a typical entry in our Tech Support interview series (which kicked off last week), and on the heels of Friday’s sit-down chat with the Coen brothers, we’re kicking off the week of “True Grit” (opening December 22) with a series of five audio chats with the film’s below-the-line personnel, all at the top of their game on this very traditional but detailed western.

    We’ll have sound mixer Skip Lievsay tomorrow, cinematographer Roger Deakins Wednesday, and production designer Jess Gonchor Friday. Each piece will lead off with a little bit of the score from Carter Burwell, who we’ll be featuring Thursday.

    Today, however, we begin with costume designer Mary Zophres.  Zophres has been with the Coens for 14 years, going back to “Fargo” in 1996.  We first spoke (as I did with most of these folks) last year regarding “A Serious Man,” but this time around we had even more to talk about given the period nature of the film.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The look of ‘Inception’

    Christopher Nolan has become known for making the Batman films look, and consequently feel, “real.”  His latest film, “Inception,” despite being a visual treat, also seemed a far cry from the CGI spectacles that normally dominate the blockbuster circuit.  It was very well-received by critics and certainly audiences alike and is currently enjoying a solid run on the awards circuit, having earned multiple nominations from both the BFCA and the HFPA.

    Speaking to cinematographer Wally Pfister, production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas (who earned the LAFCA award) and special effects supervisor Chris Corbould, it becomes clear that Nolan’s style is as infectious on the crew as it is on the public.  They delight in revealing how they collaborated with Nolan – and each other – to make “Inception” look so real.  The short answer: “Because it is.”

    Corbould, having worked with Nolan on “The Dark Knight” and “Batman Begins,” was on the fast track when Nolan approached him in 2009 to talk about the new film  “I heard from him on a Wednesday,” he recalls, “and after reading the script and hearing the pitch, I had signed the contract on the Saturday or Sunday.”

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Original Song

    I guess I’ve been pretty hard on the Best Original Song category this year. It’s not like any given year tends to have a deluge of impressive fodder up for consideration or anything, but on the whole, outside of a concentration of contenders that have a fighting chance at recognition, it just seems to be an uninspired lot of tracks in the mix for 2010.

    Before diving into the fray, some quick reminding. The music branch’s rules are always in flux and over the last couple of years they have shifted, perhaps rightly, into a frame of assessing songs as they are used within the context of a given film. Let’s look at the official language from the Academy’s rules and eligibility literature:

    An original song consists of words and music, both of which are original and written specifically for the motion picture. There must be a clearly audible, intelligible, substantive rendition (not necessarily visually presented) of both lyric and melody, used in the body of the motion picture or as the first music cue in the end credits.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Visual Effects — Volume II

    I find it somewhat appropriate to be ending my in-depth looks at the crafts categories with a discussion of Best Visual Effects. This is, after all, a category which awards the sort of behind-the-scenes crafts work that is often prominently displayed in advertisements and talked about with reverence after the film ends.

    When looking at the category’s history, it is not surprising that major blockbusters have fared the best here, with big budgets and even big revenues usually being a prerequisite to be considered for a nomination. Visual effects that “stick out” are usually rewarded, even if the film is not particularly loved. Of course, being in a beloved film helps, especially in the race for the win.

    Prior to this year, there had been only three nominees in this category. Now, there will be five. This means we won’t get the “clues” that come when a list of seven bake-off finalists was announced in previous years. That said, I feel we’ve got a lot of clues about what the final five will be already.

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