By Iain Blair
From the highs – AFI Fest, new tax breaks? – to the lows – the ongoing angst and anxiety about the future of local production – it’s been a packed and intense past month here in Hollywood.
Legendary filmmaker Paul Schrader was in town for AFI and his new film, Oh, Canada, which reunites him with Richard Gere for the first time since he directed the actor in American Gigolo, 45 years ago. The role (Schrader also wrote the script) made Gere a star, and the hit movie cemented the director/screenwriter’s place in Hollywood’s Hall of Fame. Even a quick look at some of his credits shows just what a potent force he has been over the years – and especially in the ambitious, serious and hugely influential cinema of the ‘70s and ‘80s. He wrote 1976’s seminal Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro, which was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture, and reteamed with De Niro and Scorsese on 1980’s harrowing boxing saga, Raging Bull. Since then, Schrader has written and/or directed such idiosyncratic, powerful films as The Last Temptation of Christ (reteaming again with Scorsese), The Mosquito Coast, Cat People, Affliction, Bringing Out The Dead (yet another Scorsese collaboration) and Dog Eat Dog.
“As you go along in your life, your creative life, you go through different phases, from early childhood and parents and love to midlife and whatnot,” he told me. “So sooner or later you start thinking about making a film about dying. And I’d had some health problems, and I said, well, if I’m going to make a film about dying, I better hurry up.” The result is Oh, Canada, a story about a dying legendary filmmaker (played by Gere), which co-stars Uma Thurman as his wife. It was shot by his longtime cinematographer Andrew Wonder, whose cinematic journey began under the mentorship of Schrader, evolving from an early role as his assistant into a pivotal creative partnership.
His collaborations include serving as second unit director and associate producer for Dog Eat Dog and co-directing The Future of Movies. The Emmy winner shot the film on Arri Alexa 35, Arri ALFA Anamorphic, TLS Wonderspeed Lenses, and Arri Alexa Mini LF Monochrome. Camera Equipment was provided by ARRI Rental. Grip & Lighting Equipment was provided by Insight Equipment. Dollies were provided by Tracking Shot. Walkie-Talkies were provided by Gotham Sound & Communications. Editorial Facilities were provided by Postworks NY.
Los Angeles and the hit Netflix legal drama The Lincoln Lawyer are inseparable as the series follows the exploits of unconventional lawyer Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), an iconoclastic idealist who runs his law practice out of the back seat of his Lincoln town car while taking on cases big and small across the sprawling city. Based on the series of bestselling novels by renowned author Michael Connelly, the TV series was created by David E Kelley and developed by Ted Humphrey, an accomplished writer, producer, director, and showrunner who earned multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for Best Drama Series for his work as a producer on the CBS hit show The Good Wife.
Ted Humphrey
Like many creatives, he’s worried about the future of the industry here. “We shoot the whole show in Los Angeles, but just shooting here has become a strangely audacious act,” he reports. “It used to be the standard thing, and now shows shoot all over the place, mainly for financial reasons, which has gutted the production industry here. But these books are so interwoven with the fabric of Los Angeles that we knew we had to shoot here. Obviously, a lot of our show takes place in downtown and we had the benefit of shooting season three at LA Center Studios near downtown. That was not the case in seasons one and two. And so that made things much easier from a production standpoint.”
The Lincoln Lawyer
Humphrey says he “really came to Hollywood with the idea of being a feature film writer/director, but it was right around the time that the bottom was falling out of the feature film industry and it was becoming what it is today, which is someplace where there’s huge hundred million dollar Marvel movies and little million dollar indie films and not a whole lot in between. But the timing was excellent as I got into television around the dawn of what came to be known as the Golden Age of television. And I was able to grow up in this industry in that very exciting time and ultimately become a showrunner, where you’re making a lot of decisions and working very closely with the director to bring it to life.”
The Lincoln Lawyer
Indeed, times have changed a lot since Humphrey moved here. Of the 12 Emmy-winning TV shows this year, just two of them – The Morning Show and Hacks – were filmed here. And many blockbuster films – think Wicked and all the Marvel movies – have moved to London because of the tax breaks. Many people I talk to say that California’s tax credit program isn’t competitive anymore, and that the industry here still hasn’t recovered from the one-two punch of the pandemic and the strikes. So it was welcome news when California governor Gavin Newsom just announced his intent to increase the yearly limit on the state’s film and TV tax incentive program to $750 million from $330 million. If approved by next June as is hoped, it would top all other capped film and TV tax credit programs around the country. Will it help stop the exodus of film and TV shoots fleeing the state for better tax breaks elsewhere? Stay tuned.
‘Tis the season for elections here in America, and two timely new films – The Apprentice and Reagan – shine a light on the seismic shifts in the recent political landscape, and on two very different presidents from the same party, the Republicans. The Apprentice is about Trump but has nothing to do with his hit TV show of the same name. The controversial docudrama is an origin story that sets out to examine how a young Donald Trump built his business empire in the ’70s and ’80s, with the help of the infamous mob lawyer and power broker Roy Cohn. It was directed by Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi and shot largely handheld by DP Kaspar Tuxen with an urgent, you-are-there, stripped-down approach and aesthetic. The Danish DP tested 16mm and various vintage video formats but ended up shooting on an Alexa 35 and using a small part of the sensor and a 16mm Zoom lens. The shoot was a tight 25 days. Reagan is another period piece but focuses on a very different character. Directed by Sean McNamara, with cinematography by Christian Sebaldt, ASC, it follows the title character, played by Dennis Quaid, from the glitter of Hollywood to the world stage. The ambitious and complex film, which covered 400 scenes and an 80-year storyline, was a “very challenging project,” says Sebaldt. “I shot a lot of footage in prep, testing different lenses, different styles. My colourist, Picture Shop’s Paul Westerbeck, and I developed about seven different CDLs with two different lens packages, different nets behind the lenses and different ISO settings.” He used a variety of camera packages, but leaned heavily on several Blackmagic Design cameras, including the URSA Mini Pro 12K and the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro.
Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro 12k
“The 12K worked a lot, particularly as an ‘instant crane’ camera,” added Sebaldt. “Since the movie took us to so many places, we could not afford to have a ‘Techno’ type crane available at all times. So our key grip Brandon Jones supplied a jib arm which we could put on tracks at any time, and our B Camera Operator Andrew P.C. Smith had a Ronin 2 gimbal. We mounted the URSA 12K on the Ronin and it lived there. When a crane would beef up the production value of a scene we would hang the 12K on the crane and we were ready to go.” Relying on the small size yet high quality images from the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro, Sebaldt found numerous uses for the camera. “With the appropriate lens I could add a cool angle in just minutes at any time with those small and lightweight cameras. Often they were mounted on the ceiling, like in the Oval Office, looking straight down with an ultra-wide prime. We also found we could capture additional angles of extended dialog scenes where we needed solid coverage for editorial.” Sebaldt used Blackmagic RAW throughout the shoot. “It’s a codec of amazing quality. I always shoot constant quality Q0, and know that later, because we have so much latitude, we can easily manipulate the images in the color suite. Blackmagic Design color science has such natural skin tones and fantastic reproduction of challenging contrast and detail in any scene.” The final color grade was done by Westerbeck in DaVinci Resolve Studio.
Over the years there have been many films made about Bruce Springsteen, and the latest is Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band. The new documentary feature starring the iconic musician and his famous bandmates premièred recently at the Toronto International Film Festival and it gives fans an up-close, inside look at the legendary singer and his band as they rehearse and prepare for their first live shows together in six years. The film features intimate moments and interviews with Springsteen, as well as with longtime musical collaborators guitarist Steven Van Zandt, drummer Max Weinberg, manager Jon Landau, and wife and musician Patti Scialfa.
It was directed and edited by Thom Zimny, the Emmy and Grammy award-winning filmmaker who has collaborated with Springsteen for 24 years. He won an Emmy for directing Springsteen on Broadway, and a Grammy for Wings for Wheels: The Making of Born to Run. For his latest collaboration with The Boss, Zimny took a fly-on-the-wall approach when shooting rehearsals while the musicians shook off the cobwebs.
Thom Zimny
Using a single cameraman, Justin Kane, Zimny set about capturing “the essence of the experience of Bruce in the moment with the band rehearsing – meaning vérité.” The team used a small, unobtrusive camera package of an Arri Alexa Mini and Sony FX6. Their lenses included the Angenieux Optimo and EZ Zooms, Tribe7 Blackwing7 T-Tuned Primes, and Sony GM Zooms. Zimny did editing at PostWorks New York, and also at offices in Santa Monica, here in LA. “This film is more than just a behind the scenes look at the tour,” says Zimny. “Moments from the current tour are interwoven with reflections from Bruce and E Street Band members, and rare archival footage from the band’s early days. It bridges the present with the past, offering a deep dive into the history and evolution of The E Street Band. I’m happy that this film isn’t a typical concert film or behind-the-scenes look. Instead, it’s an emotional journey that explores universal themes of time, friendship, family, and love, all through the lens of Bruce’s writing and music.”
