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A box was ticked, on to the next thing.
(If you prefer your metaphors more on-the-nose, theres always Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs referring toMr.
Turnercinematographer Dick Pope asDick Poop.)
But the subtext remained; the spotlight wants who it wants.
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Let us know at stories@vulture.com.
Gary Hecker:That was an intense scene.
It started with the Manson gang getting out of the car and walking up that long street.
Wylie wanted to hear their pants and jeans, that sound it makes when their legs move together.
Then they were carrying knives and pulled out a gun.
I made a little metallic zshinng that you hear when they go by the camera.
Then the guy was pulling the gun out, so I had to do all his gun movements.
That was the sound that kind of started everything and triggered a reaction.
It was just enough sound to make an essence of the blade shimmering in the moonlight.
Thats just tearing different pieces of jeans and thick pants, sweats big tears and yanking on the cloth.
Then the guy was getting bounced against the door, so I bounced against a door.
They wanted everything violent.
We were actually laughing after, because thats how this might sound in Brad Pitts mind.
Its gross, but I had to come up with the sound for it.
I got those face hits so you could hear face and skin.
Then for the skull crunches or teeth, I cracked celery for each one.
Then of course theres the blood that you could see squirting out of her face.
So, on another channel I used a shammy soaked with water.
I also put water in my mouth to make it so I would squirt the blood out.
When you played all those channels, it was out of control.
The flame itself, we dont do fire on the stage.
Once in a while we do fire effects, but I dont like to do it.
The fire was done with sound effects.
So, the Foley was the tanks, the movement of the gun, Leonardos footsteps.
And then sound effects had the flamethrower.
Whats cool about Tarantino is he loves Foley and he loves sound, and he crosses the line.
If you listen to all of his movies, they sound awesome.
He really appreciates it, and hes really picky.
Your sound cant just be average, ordinary sound.
Then Ive got to make it killer.
What are the hardest sounds Foley artists have created?Read more here.
Music Supervisor
CananActorCoverWhitneyHoustonsVersionoftheNationalAntheminaTVShow?ItsComplicated.
‘No is not an option’ is how we approach Ryan Murphy television."
But most people would be wrong, asPosemusic supervisor Amanda Krieg Thomas explained.
First of all, Krieg Thomas says, you better flush the recording with Whitney Houstons label.
And thats just the first step.
But having great taste is far from the only requirements necessary in this line of work.
Everything else doesnt mean anything.
Its what they want.
It ended up being John Clayton, a well-known bassist, composer, and arranger in New York.
Amanda Krieg Thomas:We were chasing him.
I tried every email, every phone number we could find for his individual publishing company.
Once we finally got a hold of everybody, they were very excited to be a part of it.
So that part was easy.
We finally got it cleared the night before the scene was shot.
No is not an option is how we work on Ryan Murphy television.
Fortunately, my team, were all very good at our job so we havent heard no too much.
But we do often have backup plans.
In the shooting phase, we tell people to get coverage, meaning filming them singing different songs.
In this case, it would have been another version of The Star-Spangled Banner.
But watching the scene, it was so critical in every way to have Whitneys version.
So thank God, we got it.
What are the hardest songs music supervisors have ever chased?Read more here.
VFX Artist
JustFixItinPost!Right?
Which means the work of VFX studios has never been in greater demand.
Fix it in post!
has become a refrain for all.
It takes a lot of [production] planning out of the equation.
A lot of the consideration goes out the window, because you no longer need it.
I think people would be surprised how much of what theyre viewing is digital.
People miss the mass majority of visual effects because nobody is supposed to notice them.
What are some of the more mundane effects youve probably missed?
Rob Nederhorst, VFX supervisor: On set, we have what we call rubbers rubberized knives.
The prop department takes a real knife, casts it in rubber, and make a mold of it.
Those things are indistinguishable from the real thing.
And we dont want that.
Safety on set is the number one priority for everyone.
You cannot stab someone or slash their throat with a rubberized knife.
Instead, we make a handle, so the performer has something to grip on to.
Then we match-move them on a computer and put a knife in there digitally.
Ninety-five percent of the knives you see inJohn Wick 3are digital.
Its all mimed out and rehearsed meticulously.
They practice this stuff so the timing feels correct.
What theyll do is build up the set with cardboard boxes, and shoot rehearsals.
Hes an unbelievably insane dude who went to the absolute max.
The way we did it was like ballet.
Im really fussy about data capture.
In fact, Im a pain in everybodys ass about it.
If you want it to look real, you need real-world measurements.
You need lighting measurements.
you gotta do the work.
What we found out is that dragons arent like solid pieces of wood.
They move, and when they move, they flex, and their muscles move too.
So we had the dragon flying and the muscles moving but Danys legs didnt react to any of it.
So we had to replace her legs.
It was a nightmare.
Literally we had to deform the lower half of her body to make it fit.
That one little detail was probably half the labor that went into those shots.
Just getting her to sit down.
The first time we did it, we had no idea how hard it would be.
The second time, it didnt get any easier.
It was just as hard.
Of course, this approach requires really long reset times, and its not always convenient.
Everything has to drip.
We refer to this creature internally as The Goop.
We started with the idea of thousands of rats screaming in pain in a very dark basement.
The Duffers wanted the rats to explode or to be more precise, implode.
That made it a little more interesting.
Youre not looking for guts and blood to splatter all over the place like a grenade effect.
You want the rats to sort of flip inside out, instantly.
It would splatter, but not separate into isolated chunks.
It had to be something that looked nasty, but on that thin line between spooky-cool and outright gory.
So we made a system using an animated rig rat asset and a recipe from the creature effect department.
What are the hardest effects SFX artists have pulled off?Read more here.
Food Stylists
GiveThatPlateofCheesyLasagnaanOscar
When do you call in a food stylist?
“When the food itself seems to be performing.”
Erm, we take that back.You have no idea.
Food stylists work in tandem with prop masters, adjacent to the art and props departments.
They tend to be specialists, brought in when the script calls for food in the foreground.
Its the food stylists job to determine with the filmmakers what kind of Italian will do.
And a prop master says, Oh, call Tamara.
But its crucial work.
Ive never felt like the low man on the totem pole, Spungen explains.
I get to be pretty high up there.
Im part of the creative process.
We needed to get that shape exactly right.
I had to very, very gingerly scoop the ice cream, to protect these old scoops.
Ice cream is one of the biggest things I normally fake, because it melts too easily.
But in this case they wanted to see it melt on screen, so we used the real stuff.
People always assume my fake ice cream is mashed potatoes, but mashed potatoes dont take color very well.
It makes my life easier and more difficult at the same time.
And we both found the same photo separately, a picture of these vegetables that are cubed.
They looked so cool.
I had never cried doing food-styling before, but I cried when trying to do this.
It was so, so hard.
It was so frustrating.
The thing about a photo is, you dont know what theyve done: It could be photoshopped.
It was impossible to replicate.
We did four different versions.
We did it raw.
We did it cooked.
We tried everything it was like the puzzle that would not let me sleep.
The director was unhappy with all of them.
I havent seen the movie yet.
The mac and cheese was my daughter Evans vegan recipe.
OnOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood, it took three days to film the scene with the fried chicken.
Leo took a bite out of more than 60 freshly cooked chicken legs.
We did a million things.
Ill have to see what they ended up doing with it.
I didFriendsandSeinfeld the Soup Nazi, top of the muffin, when they did the turkey on his head.
Tons of stuff like that.
But the littlest thing can turn into a nightmare in this job, and not always what youd expect.
We had real lions for that.
We made this big fake bucket of slime stuff, but the lion just wasnt going to have it.
The lion simply was not fooled.
Its like, are you kidding me?
So I had to go get livers and bones and all this stuff.
Stuff the lion would actually eat.
On top of that, we had the PETA people out there.
They were making sure the flies and the larva we were adding to the bucket were being treated properly.
I mean, really?
But we got the shot.
And that was not digital.
That was freaking real.
She is a big pie person, apparently.
My job was to make the piece [of pie] look bad, which was really hard.
But its hard for me to make something look really awful.
We were filming in an abandoned house, a big empty house, in the woods in Massachusetts.
Josh Brolin has kidnapped Kate Winslet, and at one point they bake a pie together.
They wanted the pie to look really, really, really super messy.
I couldnt make it messy enough they kept saying, it looks too good!
They wanted it to look completely slapped together.
They had crazy expectations of the food.
A pie can only look so messy, you know what I mean?
Most people would not make such a messy pie, period.
Location Scout
4GoodDaysintheLifeofaLocationScout
Everywhere we go, we are visitors.
A location manager is constantly putting out fires before anyone even smells the smoke.
Crew and neighborhood included.
In short: permits.
Parking is the bane of our existence.
Sometimes its easy to be a visitor, but it can also be a downright dangerous job.
We shot on several naval bases, and wouldnt you know it?
You have to be in the Navy to have access to the bases!
It took 24 to 48 hours on the short end.
Mostly, it was a 7- to 14-day turnaround.
It was the best!
The majority filmed in Toronto, and then 17 days straight of filming in New York.
We were in Chinatown filming.
The street was very, very tight.
One lane, but theres a bunch of shops.
That day we had 300 extras, a bunch of cars, crane, stuff like that.
We were the sixth production in like six months to come through and shut it down.
So the locals were, rightfully so, not too receptive to another production shutting down their street.
We showed up and the entire block had their music blaring and they were banging pots and pans.
We eventually did get it squared away.
We had translators that we started sending out to talk to people.
Our location manager met with the head of the neighborhood there.
It took a while and we were talking to everyone and compensating them.
They yell action and one individual comes back out and is banging pots and pans again and playing music.
I didnt realize it had been like two minutes and they had called cut.
It confused the person who was playing the music.
The director was looking for a farmhouse with character that wouldnt have any neighbors in sight.
What the fuck are you fucking doing at my gate?
What the hell are you doing here?
Get away from that!
Cinematography Team
StefanCzapskysGreatestOn-SetMemory
Tim Burton’s longtime collaborator recalls that time a monkey punched Danny DeVito.
Our job is to translate whats on the page to the screen in the visual sense.
Stefan Czapsky, a longtime collaborator of Tim Burtons, concedes the same.
If the director of the film is the boss in the hierarchy of authority, you work for them.
But its a collaborative job, he continues.
You talk with a director about how best to shoot the story.
Theres no strict border between director and cinematographer; the divide is defined individually in each pair.
Macat, for one, relishes the opportunity to work with his hands.
Whenever I can operate the camera myself, I do.
Its fun and immersive.
I love to shoot film, theres nothing like it.
Its an indescribable sensation.
Czapsky knows the feeling well.
When it comes out even better than it looked in your imagination, theres a rush you get.
Ive heard jazz musicians feel the same thing.
You get off on it.
Whats the biggest rush hes ever experienced?
:
OnBatman Returns, in the Penguins lair.
It was all pre-digital.
I think theres something like 120 visual-effects shots in the entire thing.
Oh, and the whole thing had to be refrigerated because it was filled with real penguins.
My job was to light this space, and Ive never been a big planner.
I dont make diagrams.
In this case, we couldnt hang lights because theyd be in the shot.
[Burton] wanted 360-degree shots getting the high ceilings.
The sheer scale was like nothing Id ever done before.
It was a studio operation.
It was all a matter of familiarizing him with Danny DeVito.
The monkey freaks out, shrieks, and attacks Danny right in his balls.
It was just a protection instinct, the monkey didnt get hurt, but it was a great take.
On-set Animal Trainer
FromHollywoodtoBroadway,HowOneTrainerLiterallyTeachesOldDogsNewTricks
“At 20, I became a world-famous animal trainer.”
Bill Berloni owes his career in animal training to Little Orphan Annie.
At 20, I became a world-famous animal trainer.
That was in 1977.
(The dog went straight for Berlonis face!)
How are you doing today, Bill?Pretty good.
I went into the city, did a dog shoot, and then after that had a rat audition.
I have 30 dogs, but they dont always get the job.
I have a series of horse people and raptor people Ill work with.
Farmers who specialize in goats, or sheep, or cows.
A call will come in, like somebody looking to cast a rat for an HBO show.
Ill ask what color and provide pictures.
If it passes that step, youre booked to shoot the day.
The Greatest Showmanis among your credits.
And they said, No, all the animals are CGI.
I find that the methods used to train wild animals are very harsh and inhumane.
Domesticated animals have been bred and sort of reprogrammed to deal with man.
Im so happy CGI has come along.
The scene calls for the dog being able to bark at Tom Thumb.
The exact look was the hardest thing to find.
We found a breeder who lives in Manhattan and loves doing movie work.
So we took Skipper home and we worked with him and taught him how to bark.
Four months later we show up to the set.
Whether its a rescue or youre borrowing someones pet, theres a transition period.
It all starts with basic obedience training, which is teaching your dog how to listen.
People think that to teach dogs means you train them to do things.
Our training method is one of positive reinforcement.
You capture that moment, put a command to it, and then youve got the behavior.
So thats what we did.
Taught Skipper how to sit and stay, and then taught him how to bark on a hand signal.
They dont act happy; they dont act sad; they dont act angry.
Theyre in real time.
What about the aggressive stuff?You always get these calls for biting dogs.
Shes got all these brilliant shepherds that are the sweetest dogs you’re free to imagine.
So whenever we get an aggression-bang out shot you know Ill call Meredith.
Oh, is that all?Wolves and wolf-hybrids are illegal to own.
So my wife and I did some research and we found a rare breed of dog called a Tamaskan.
About 25 years ago, a bunch of people got together to start breeding dogs to look like wolves.
Thats the sole purpose of a Tamaskan.
The dogs are actually used inGame of Thronesas the direwolves.
I went out to Seattle and met this familys pet Tamaskan, Luchta.
I drove him back and kissed him good-bye.
And theyre paid by the producer to be there.
Trainers have to really self-police.
Its their job, to perform such death-defying moves safely and with as much forethought as is celestially possible.
And so they can almost be rote in describing the grueling details of their profession.
How do you get a stunt person really talking?
No, wait, a motorcycle stunt.
You know, on a motorcycle, it would be even better, right?
Something like averaging 200 miles an hour for a certain distance on a public road.
We would have to refuel while were doing it.
Id like to do the fastest and the longest distance.
