WIRED interview with JJ Abrams

There's a great interview that WIRED did with JJ Abrams pretty recently. JJ talks about everything from inheriting the biggest film saga ever to making sure the cast worked well together. Pasted below are some of my highlights:

On working with Larry Kasdan:

"Working with Larry definitely ties for first in terms of incredible experiences I’ve had with this project. We all take our experiences with us from one project to the next, but in this case, I never looked to draw from my past work. More than anything, I drew on personal experiences as cautionary tales, things that I didn’t want to do again. For example, I didn’t want to enter into making a movie where we didn’t really own our story. I feel like I’ve done that a couple of times in my career. That’s not to say I’m not proud of my work, but the fact is I remember starting to shoot Super 8 and Star Trek Into Darkness and feeling like I hadn’t really solved some fundamental story problems.

The collaboration, for me, was an education in storytelling and doing so with clarity, with efficiency, brevity—wit. It was a little like taking an extended master class. And because he’s also a director, he knew what I was going through in prep and in production, and he allowed for my needs. Sometimes those needs were practical, other times they were creative needs or feelings I had. But he was there to help that process, the same way I would have been if I had known he was directing. It was always about moving this thing forward in the right way, about making this movie the right way. I can’t say enough about him.

So I tried to not forget the mistakes I’d made, but I also tried to focus on things that I find inspiring about cinema. I asked questions like “How do we make this movie delightful?” That was really the only requirement Larry and I imposed on each other: The movie needed to be delightful. It was not about explaining everything away, not about introducing a certain number of toys for a corporation, not about trying to appease anyone. This has only ever been about what gets us excited."

On the production design of the new film:

"It all started at the very beginning, when we were working with Michael Arndt, the first writer on the project. While Michael and I were collaborating, I invited our production designer, Rick Carter, into the story process. Just as it would be impossible to separate John Williams’ score from the Star Wars movies, it was impossible to separate what Ralph McQuarrie and his design team had done from A New Hope. My sense was that the sooner Rick could be part of the process, the better. He’s an incredible dreamer; his mind will go amazing places and dream up things you never would have imagined.

Then there were things like the radar dish on the Falcon, which clearly was ripped off in Jedi, so it needed a new one. But part of the decision was made as a fan. There’s a part of me that wants to know: That’s the Falcon from this era. Now I know that when I see the Falcon with the rectangular dish, we’re at a moment after it traded hands. It also helped us mark time."

On casting The Force Awakens:

"A lot of this cast wasn’t even born in 1977. How do you relay the legacy of what Star Wars means to people like you and me? Or is that a burden that you try to avoid?

It’s a really strange thing, when you think about being born into a world where it just exists. Despite their having been born horrifically recently, these kids knew about and understood Star Wars in a way we all do; they just were born into it as opposed to it happening during their lifetime. The key in casting them was finding people who were able to do everything. When you think about all that these characters go through, not just in this movie but knowing their work would continue, these individuals needed to be worthy bearers of this burden and opportunity to continue to tell the story. I think about the Harry Potter movies—that’s unbelievable that they cast those films the way they did. And for what, eight movies?! That was a miracle. They needed to be able to do everything, and they all killed it.

We knew we weren’t just casting one movie—we were casting at least three. That, to me, was the biggest challenge. When we met Daisy Ridley, when we found John Boyega, and then Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver came aboard, we got really excited. And yes, Daisy and John could work together, but what happens when Harrison’s in the mix? What will that feel like? If it doesn’t spark, it’s a fucking disaster. Yes, BB-8 is a great character, amazingly puppeteered, but what will happen when he’s suddenly in a scene with C-3P0 or R2-D2? Will it feel bizarre? Will it feel wrong? Somehow it didn’t. When Anthony Daniels told me, “Oh my God, I love BB-8!” I said, “We’re going to be OK.” Because if he’s OK, it’s working.

Or seeing the sweetness between Han and Rey or the tension and comedy between Han and Finn. It was really exciting to say, “These scenes are working!” We worked really hard to cast and to write and to put it all together, but you just don’t know until you start shooting. Then all of a sudden, you’re on-set watching it and you know. It’s a little bit like having a party and having friends from your new school meet friends from your old school, and you think, “What’s going to happen?” And all of a sudden they’re getting along famously and this party’s really fun! It was a lot of work, but it ended up being great."

Head on over to Wired.com to read the interview in full.

The Influence of Steven Spielberg on JJ Abrams [Film School Paper Series]

Included below is a paper that I co-wrote with some fellow students for TMA 292: Media Arts History II. This class essentially covered the history of film from 1945 until the present, and was a great treasure-trove of knowledge for me, personally. This topic came to our group as a way to look deeper at both Spielberg's and Abrams' films, and to compare and contrast them. Anyway, on to the paper...

Steven Spielberg is undoubtedly one of the most influential filmmakers ever to grace the medium. He has, perhaps, become the face of filmmaking as the most well-known director of his time. It is not Scorsese or Coppola or Polanski that the layman will recognize, but Spielberg. This, notes Stephen Rowley, has sadly been Spielberg’s bane. Says Rowley, “He is, in box-office terms, the most successful director ever, and there are few things quite so damaging to the reputation of an artist than extreme popularity.” But, as we see with Chaplin, Hitchcock, and others, popularity does not mean an absence of substance. His breadth and depth of work is impressive enough to rival the above-mentioned legends. And influence (especially to the lengths that Spielberg has achieved), is a byproduct of substance. For Shakespeare continues to inspire artists across the mediums not for his high-profile murders and crowd-pleasing stories of royalty but because he delves to the intricacies of the human experience. And Gaudi is remembered, and studied, in part for his extravagance but ultimately for the universality of his architecture. Contemporarily, will anyone be aspiring to the merits of Michael Bay forty years from now? Probably not.

Spielberg’s professional work began back in 1970 when he started out in television. After impressing the executives he made his first feature, Sugarland Express, in 1974 and became a household name only a year later with the history-altering success of Jaws. Forty years after Spielberg’s breakout, his influence is beginning to reveal itself in the work of emerging filmmakers who grew up with his hits of the 70’s and 80’s. J.J. Abrams is one such filmmaker. Bryan Burk, the producer of Super 8, as well as one of Abrams’ childhood friends with whom he made films, stated that, “Steven Spielberg was at the epicenter of everything that we dreamed of doing when we grew up” (Abrams). And Abrams himself acknowledges Spielberg’s influence on him, saying that, “It’s hard to separate the experience of growing up in the mid-70s and early-80s from the influence of Steven Spielberg’s films” (Abrams). Thus Abrams entire body of work is strewn about with Spielbergian influences. But his “passion project” Super 8, which Abrams both wrote and directed, is so heavily Spielbergian that, we argue, along with Peter Debruge, that the entire film is an homage to Spielberg and essentially a “Spielberg-era nostalgia trip” (Debruge).  Even to the point that were it directed by Spielberg himself it would not lose a single beat in terms of its style, themes, characters, etc; and in essence be the exact same film, except without the lens flares perhaps.

In tracking Spielberg’s success one will find that much of his initial popularity, and admittedly part of what attracted Abrams to his work, stems from his mastery of spectacle. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) pushed the limits of special effects. The Sugarland Express includes various car chases. And nothing need be said of Jaws, the Indiana Jones films (1981-89), and Jurassic Park (1993). But his brilliance comes not only superficially in the set pieces, but in the deep grounding of his characters in reality. Says Rowley of Sugarland Express (but it could be easily said of his filmography in general), “Given Spielberg’s reputation as a master of spectacle, it is easy to be distracted by the dizzy choreography of the many vehicles in the film, and overlook the assurance with which he handles the character drama” (Rowley). Abrams too notes this, “One of the things about Steven is his ability to tell stories about people who are real and relatable and grounded, who are going through something insane” (Abrams). Thus we see Hook (1991), a story with fantastic elements and special effects, really focusing on Peter’s (Robin Williams) profoundly human experience of accepting and/or rejecting one’s past; E.T. (1982) centering on the effects of an alien not on collective society but on intimate family relations; and Schindler’s List (1993) targeting the emotional journey of one man rather than the extensive horrors of World War II, although the film gives justice to these as well. Ultimately, as AMC notes, this combination of spectacle and character forms the “rework[ing of] the genre crowd-pleasers of his youth into the modern blockbusters” (“The 50 Greatest Directors”).  The spectacle perks up his audience initially, but his characters pull them in close.

Emulating the master, young Abrams loved to experiment with special effects and magic.  On one visit to a particular magic store in New York City, he came across a product that would sculpt the rest of his life and career and retrospectively help him understand why he admired Spielberg’s work. This influential product was a “Tannen’s Mystery Magic Box,” about the size of a shoebox with a giant question mark on the packaging. The box supposedly contained (and still contains) all sorts of magic tricks, but Abrams has never opened it (TED). Why? To him, the box represents infinite possibility and is a symbol of mystery that he keeps to remind him of the power of the unknown. Abrams thinks so highly of mystery, in fact, that he states, “Mystery is more important than knowledge” (TED).  From this impetus, Abrams imbues his films with added suspense through the element of mystery. It is what made Alias and Lost successful, it is the driving point of Mission Impossible III and Star Trek. But it is perhaps in Super 8 where Abrams employs the element of mystery to his greatest advantage. Harkening back to Spielberg’s Jaws, the monster is never physically shown until the end of the film. In Jaws, of course, this was unintentional because of the consistently malfunctioning mechanical shark. Ultimately these technical limitations imposed on Spielberg during the production of Jaws turned out to be for the better by adding suspense to the film. Similarly in Super 8, we see the destruction and havoc the monster wreaks, but we only catch glimpses of it here and there. It isn’t until the suspenseful climax when we get to see it in full. Abrams was in fact so adamant about promoting suspense through mystery in Super 8 that he never even let the cast know what the alien looked like and forbade them from mentioning details about the secretive parts of the film.  

The spectacle in Super 8 is similarly Spielbergian. As noted above, Spielberg’s work continuously pushed the boundaries of special effects for ‘70s and ‘80s audiences and Abrams, in turn, pays homage to Spielberg by including the proper amount of spectacle for his 21st century viewers. Thus, his main set piece of the film, the train wreck, is done in a way that is obviously over the top but definitely dazzles the screen. Dennis Muren, one of the visual effects supervisors on Super 8 as well as a frequent Spielberg collaborator (Close Encounters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Jurassic Park among his credits) notes this explicit connection between Super 8 and Spielberg’s films, “It was pretty interesting coming onto the film, since I worked on a lot of the movies that this film was trying to remind people of. I really knew the type of feeling that JJ was going for because I had done similar sorts of shots for Steven” (Failes). Muren knew exactly the sort of pizazz that Abrams wanted to add into the film, as he had done the same for Spielberg in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Thus Muren’s visual effects combine in Super 8 in a way that is reminiscent of Spielberg’s visually striking films from the past.

But even though Abrams is, like his idol, a fan of elaborate special effects, he actually prefers to describe his style as focusing more on the character depth than sheer spectacle, again like Spielberg. In fact, in an interview with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, he states:

“I love larger than life spectacle moments but what is important to me is that the characters are at the center; that emotionally you know where you are and you’re tracking characters that are taking you through those spectacular moments.  That is the most important thing to me, that balance of the intimacy with the spectacle and sort of hyper reality.”  (BAFTA)

Likewise in a TED talk in 2007, Abrams stated: “When people do sequels or rip-off movies of a genre, they’re ripping off the wrong thing.  You are not supposed to rip off the shark or the monster . . . if you are going to rip something off, rip off the character, the stuff the matters” (TED). So just like Spielberg, Abrams doesn’t simply want to make a spectacle movie about aliens but rather a film about coping with parental problems in which the alien becomes an integral, but secondary, part of the film. E.T., Abrams says, “[Is] a film, really, about divorce, not about an alien” (Boucher); that Jaws isn’t really about a shark, it’s about a man trying to fit into a new city and job; and A.I. (2001) isn’t about the dawn of robots, it’s about a boy trying to find his identity and belonging (TED). Ultimately, for Spielberg and Abrams, it is not the spectacle, but the characters that make the movie.

For Spielberg, often these characters appear in the form of a child or as a father having parental issues. The list is exhausting. In Close Encounters we see Roy (Richard Dreyfuss) neglect his family for his internal, perhaps spiritual, obsession. E.T. is seen masterfully from the point of view of a child in a divorced family. War of the Worlds (2005) depicts Ray’s (Tom Cruise) parental problems set in front of, and given precedence over, a hostile alien invasion. Both Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Catch Me if You Can (2002) involve father-son tensions. Hook’s main character is both child and parent with fatherly woes. And even Dr. Grant (Sam Neill) in Jurassic Park is preemptively afraid of parental responsibility. As TIME magazine writer Gilbert Cruz notes, in Spielberg’s films “fatherhood is something to be feared, avoided and run away from…until it isn’t,” a theme that is probably, if not undoubtedly, connected to the divorce of Spielberg’s parents when he was nineteen.

The concept of identity mentioned above in regards to A.I. forms a wider undercurrent in much of Spielberg’s work than in simply that single film. Spielberg himself admitted to going through similar conflicts as a kid as he grappled with his identity as an Orthodox Jew, with which he struggled accepting, says Spielberg,

“It isn’t something I enjoy admitting, but when I was seven, eight, nine years old, God forgive me, I was embarrassed because we were Orthodox Jews. I was embarrassed by the outward perception of my parents’ Jewish practices. I was never really ashamed to be Jewish, but I was uneasy at times. My grandfather always wore a long black coat, black hat and long white beard. I was embarrassed to invite my friends over to the house, because he might be in a corner davening [praying].” (Smith)

Besides A.I., similar wrestles with identity show up in Hook as Peter is presented as needing to accept his childhood identity. And the protagonists in E.T. come to know who they are better throughout their interactions with the alien visitor.

Similarly, Super 8 is a story that is grounded in its characters, centers on strained or broken familial relations, and explores the concept of personal identity set among elaborate, “insane,” events. Joe Lamb is a 10 year old kid whose mother was killed in an industrial accident, and whose father, the small town’s deputy, doesn’t necessarily know how to raise a young child. Joe, however, copes by helping his friends make a zombie movie, much to the chagrin of his father. Similarly, Joe’s love interest in the film (if you can call a 12 year old a love interest), is Alice Dainard, whose mother is absent from her life and whose father is the one responsible for the death of Joe’s mother. Both children, therefore, come from broken homes and are suddenly thrown into a Spielberg-like “insane” situation where they must use their wits and child-like innocence to stay alive. Here there is another connection to Spielberg’s E.T. in particular in that the adults contribute to the antagonism. Yes, they, like the kids, try to figure things out as they unfold, but the kids are already one or two steps ahead of them, and if the adults would just get out of the way then the kids would be able to solve the problem. Ultimately, Abrams reveals the true meaning of Super 8 in his comment about E.T., “I discovered later that E.T. was never an alien movie for [Spielberg], it was a story about a divorced family, and only later had he discovered that it had become an alien movie. So it was cool to see that even he had done something like that before” (Abrams).

And so, Spielberg’s films thus provide an intimate look into the real life familial conflicts of his own life, mingled with his childhood struggles with identity, set among impressive set pieces from the films of his youth, in the end providing, in a sense, a meshing together of his personal struggles and the elaborate special effects from the films he loved, ultimately forming a fully complete portrait of his own childhood. And similarly, Abrams’ Super 8 too gives us child characters within broken families, in conflict with their parents, searching for identity, all amidst a situation, conveyed by special effects, that is bigger than they are. Thus, it could be said that Super 8 is an homage to Spielberg, which is true. But furthermore, it can be argued that Abrams, through the Spielbergian influence of his youth, will continue, in essence, to rework Spielberg as Spielberg reworked the genre classics of his day, perhaps ultimately providing us with spectacle film with a level of substance that surpasses even the mastery of Spielberg.

           

           

Works Cited

Abrams, J.J., dir. Super 8. Paramount Pictures, 2011. Film.

Cruz, Gilbert. "The Five Ways To Know You're Watching a Spielberg Movie." Time. Time, 3 Jan. 2012. Web. 4 Apr. 2015.

Dawn, Randee. "TV Exerts Remote Control on Abrams." Variety Nov 19 2013: 76. ProQuest. Web. 26 Feb. 2015 .

DeBruge, Peter. "Super 8." Variety. 4 June 2011. Web. 9 Apr. 2015.

"Directors' Trademarks: J.J. Abrams." Directors' Trademarks: J.J. Abrams. 13 May 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2015.

Failes, Ian. "Super 8: ILM’s Production Value on Screen." FXGuide. 21 June 2011. Web. 9 Mar. 2015.

"J. J. Abrams Biography." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Advameg, Inc., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2015.

Rowley, Stephen. “Steven Spielberg.” Senses of Cinema. Senses of Cinema Journal, Feb. 2006. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.

Smith, Emily. "The Sally Field Handbook - Everything You Need to Know about Sally Field."Google Books. Emereo Publishing, 4 Feb. 2013. Web. 9 Apr. 2015.

"The 50 Greatest Directors of All Time." Amc.com. Web. 9 Apr. 2015.

TED. "J.J. Abrams: The Mystery Box." TED. N.p., Mar. 2007. Web. 9 Apr. 2015.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens 2nd Teaser Trailer

Star Wars Celebration is in full swing down in Anaheim, California, and JJ Abrams has revealed a new teaser trailer for the upcoming film:

Watch it again.

And again.

The voice over of Luke Skywalker (reminiscent of his line from Return of the Jedi) as we see shots of Vader's burned out helmet:

Then the closeup on (presumably) Luke's robotic hand:

Then a shot of the iconic Graflex lightsaber that Luke used in A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, being handed off from somebody to somebody else:

And then we get to the shot where the X-Wings fly past the camera. That's the coolest shot in the trailer, perhaps with the exception being the shot of Han and Chewie at the end.

The motion in the shot is epic. The sounds. The composition. I can't wait to see this battle played out in theaters in December.

After the X-Wings, we get a good look at who Kylo Ren is:

The mask is very reminiscent of the old Knights of the Old Republic games. He's obviously using the force in this shot. Against who, or what?

Then we get a glimpse of the new Stormtroopers on an ice/snow planet, that is guarded by turbolaser batteries:

And then, after a climactic chase, we get a nice moment as Han tells Chewie, "Chewie, we're home."

And that's the moment that did it for me. We're home. It feels like Star Wars, and it looks like Star Wars. I guess we'll see in December.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Teaser Trailer!

Wow. Two years after LucasFilm was acquired by Disney and a new Star Wars film was announced, we finally have a teaser trailer for it! There has been a lot of speculation up until this point, but now we finally have some concrete moments from the film. What follows were the highlights for me.

First up is the soccer-ball droid. The design of its dome feel very 1970s inspired. Very minimalist in details and reminiscent of the droids from the original Star Wars. I think it's great!

Next up is the Stormtroopers. They're definitely not clones, because they're all different heights. This is a good thing. Shows that the Imperial Academy is still recruiting, even 30 years after the fall of the Empire. Also, the design looks futuristic enough, while still maintaining the resemblance to the original troopers. 

Next up is the X-Wing pilot. Apparently the pilot is Oscar Isaac's character, but I can't really tell. Haven't really seen him in a lot of stuff. But first things first. What's up with that helmet?! It looks like a bad fan-film, for Pete's sake! Almost like an old leather football helmet the way his cheeks are being hugged. I definitely would have preferred that they stick with the original design. But then again, a lot can happen in 30 years of design and use. I love the angle of this shot, though. It hearkens back to the original trilogy where you felt like you're in the cockpit with our heroes, rather that just observing from a distance, ala Prequels.

The reveal of the new X-Wings is awesome. The frame above looks like a great piece of concept art, but it is in fact a frame from the movie. I don't much care for how the wings split apart as they do, but it could grow on me. I do, however, like the blue paint jobs this time around. Red is awesome, but I prefer blue. The technology has evolved to the point where you can shoot a blue object on a bluescreen (who knows, maybe they used greenscreen instead?) I'm actually building a Blue Squadron right now, which I think is very timely. I love the composition of this shot as well. The layers are built up by the X-Wings themselves,  and to have them skimming across the surface of the water like that is great. Best shot in the trailer, for me.

And then we come to this shot. A dark-cloaked character stumbling through the snow, who then angrily ignites his lightsaber. We don't really know who this character is yet, but we know he wields the red, flame-like lightsaber that has a sort-of cross-guard on it, for some reason. Again, this shot feels like it was ripped straight from a mediocre fan-film, although the atmosphere in those woods looks pretty sweet.

 And lastly, we come to this shot. The good old Millennium Falcon, performing a high-G turn in the atmosphere of this desert planet, and getting shot at by TIE Fighters. You'll notice the radar dish is different in this film, because Lando knocked it off on their Death Star run in the Battle of Endor. The ship also looks proportioned a bit differently, as well. It looks like it's been on a diet, and is slimmer through the whole of the ship. Looks great though.

And that's pretty much everything that I liked about the teaser. This has definitely piqued my interest, and the interest of millions of people around the world since it came out yesterday. Stay tuned for more!

Christopher Nolan on Low-Budget Filmmaking

This video interview of Christopher Nolan has been floating around the 'net for the past week or so, and I thought it'd be about time to repost it here myself:

I have been a fan of Nolan's since I saw Batman Begins (like everybody has, I suppose), but in this interview, he talks about what it was like to make a "no-budget" film in the UK, where he's from. He talks about how there was an Indie filmmaking movement going on at the same time in the United States, but that not much was going in the UK. He worked a job doing corporate video and sound work, and made a 16mm film "Following" on the weekends with his friends. Shot in black and white on a shoe-string budget, Nolan discusses some of the money-saving techniques used in this film that have influenced him to this day, such as placing the actors near windows so as to use the natural light, and to save on lighting costs. He discusses many more workarounds in the interview, so if you've just skipped over the video (yes, I know it's 26 minutes long, and you're busy, but if so, what are you doing on my blog?), I'd suggest you stop reading and take a looksie.

Looks like even the pros still use simple tricks to achieve their epic visions.

Video of the Week: Film Noir Storyboarding Assignment

This week's Video of the Week is my Film Noir Storyboarding Assignment. Check it out below:

Story Boarding Assignment from Bills Films on Vimeo.

I made this video last year as an assignment for my storyboarding class at BYU. The assignment was to take 10 words (which the professor gave us), and then put them together in an order that made sense, storyboard out the shots, shoot it, and edit it.

This assignment was a lot of fun for me to do, because there was no genre attached to the assignment, just cryptic words such as "eye," "gun," "light switch," etc... It was fun to associate a genre and a mood to these words, and then to storyboard the actual process. I had previously done a blog post about concept art and storyboarding, which has actually seen a lot of traffic for this blog, so if you're interested in reading it again, go here. Anyway.

I decided on a moody black and white (very grainy) look, hearkening back to the classic film noir films of the 1940s and 50s. I'm not saying that I achieved anything like unto those films (for one, those films are 4:3, not 2.35:1), but the mood comes across well. The idea for the girl's lips to be the only thing in color was taken from a few different sources, but mainly Schindler's List, where the only color in the film is the girl's red coat (not counting the ending scene). 

I shot the first three shots at night in our apartment. Instead of using smoke in order to see the light in shot #2, I used baby-powder. Turns out that with the grain you can barely see it. Oh well. Shots 4-8, and 10 were shot at BYU in the longest hallway I could find, and shot 9 was back at our apartment, for obvious reasons (although it doesn't really match the background. Probably should have filmed a background plate and then shot Brian in front of a greenscreen so that it would match better. Hindsight is 20-20).

Below are the storyboards that I came up with. And just a disclaimer, I don't claim to have any skill with drawing or any of that. Anyway:

Very rudimentary drawings, but they get the point across.

The smaller frame with the arrows on it means to zoom in. I didn't end up zooming in the film, but simply used a closeup instead.

As you can see, it's a very simple sequence. I originally storyboarded it a little out of order. And while I'm not that great at math, you'll notice there are only 9 boards, not 10. Couldn't find the other one.

Technical bits about the video: it was shot on the Panasonic GH2 with the (extremely slow) 14-140mm f/4-5.8 and the (a lot faster) 20mm f/1.7. Edited in Sony Vegas, and the music is from The Bourne Identity. Used the new Steadicam for one shot, and, as you can tell, I needed to do a LOT more practice with it.