Reading through the comments on our post about the innovative new camera stabilizer MōVi, I was reminded of something I saw recently at LACMA's amazing Stanley Kubrick exhibit. It is a 1976 letter from producer Jan Harlan to Kubrick himself, in which Harlan talks about a new device he'd just discovered: the Steadicam.
If that's hard to read, here's the transcript (with spelling corrections, emphasis mine):
10. Feb. 76
ED DI GUILIO CAMERA BRACKET
Dear Stanley,
I saw this new contraption for hand-held shots in action. It's just terrific. Enclosed is a photograph of one of the prototypes. The whole secret is a perfect balance of the camera and the arm AND a spring-loaded tension arm which separates the body movement from the camera to an astonishing degree. The operator can run and the camera moves through the air as if held on a string from above. I saw a roll of film this morning shot by Haskel where the operator sits on a crane -- the crane comes down the the ground, the operator gets off the seat and walks away, no cut. Not only will this thing save a lot of money and time by avoiding tracks, but you could do shots and think of shots which would not enter your mind otherwise. You see, I am sold on that thing, although it costs $30,000. Ed will be in London on Feb 25 for 4 hours and I told him to send you that roll of film which I saw. I promised him that you will send it back to him within a few days. He will just arrange with someone that the roll is delivered to you.
Ed will be in Copenhagen in 2 weeks and I have asked him to see Mr. Jakobsen and find out for himself what is happening. I assume that Jakobsen has not contacted you in the meantime.
best Jan
Exactly. "I am sold on it, although it costs ____." He was sold on it for creative reasons. Many commenters took issue with the pricetag of the MōVi, as if it were meant for personal ownership. But this is not something one buys to stash in a closet -- it is a rental item. As I wrote in a comment: "What is important is A) does it allow you to get shots that serve your production that you wouldn’t be able to get otherwise? B) does it allow you to get shots more quickly/cheaply than you would otherwise? and C) what does it rent for a day?" The Steadicam was expensive -- $30,000 in 1976 is $120,000 today, accounting for inflation -- but many of the most iconic shots in Kubrick's first film using the Steadicam, The Shining, were only possible because of the technological innovation of the device. A snippet, because why not:
Kubrick heard about this wonderful invention, found ways to use it to better tell his story, and rented one (which happened to come with the inventor himself, Garrett Brown, as operator). The second I saw the MōVi I knew that I wanted to use it for many of the basketball scenes in MANCHILD, and yet I have no intention of buying one or even thinking about the price tag, other than considering how it impacts the cost to rent -- and even that has more to do with the dayrate of multiple skilled operators than it does with the price tag on the device itself.
Kubrick would do the same thing with the MōVi as he did with the Steadicam, and that is to concern himself with telling a great story. And if you think "Kubrick wouldn't have to worry about the price, he's Stanley Kubrick (and not alive)" that may be true, but keep in mind that the MōVi is eight times cheaper than the 1976 Steadicam was in today's dollars.
If you grew up or listened to pop music anywhere within arms reach of the 90s and early aughts, you're likely to have some semblance of unavoidable knowledge of Jennifer "J.Lo" Lopez's love life. It seemed like paparazzi and tabloid culture was at an all-time high around then, and luckily (hopefully?) has calmed down at least a little bit as we've all matured in our media literacy (in some ways better than others).
As a response after a 10 year hiatus from music, J.Lo recently released her music film and album This is Me... Now . It's both an answer to that particularly public time in her very successful career and life, as well as a love letter to her voice as an artist.
The result is an hour long conceptual music video-like film cataloguing her love life and growth through good ol' visual metaphor and dance a la the likes of Lemonade (unavoidable reference, though now cliche). It's very cool and stylish and a true testament of artistic expression that's worth a watch for anyone ranging from J.Lo diehards to casual fans. I'm a punk guy with little knowledge of J.Lo past her hits, and I had fun!
But we're not here to talk about that today. While filming This is Me... Now, a separate documentary was film simultaneously of the filmmaking process of the music film, The Greatest Love Story Never Told. (Phew).
The results are a charming and vulnerable look into an already vulnerable project. For our audience here at No Film School, it also offers quite an interesting voyeuristic view on how a production of this magnitude is made (and how it might be particularly hard without the J.Lo money of it all). And, lastly, lucky for us, we got to speak with the director of the documentary Jason Bergh on the process of crafting J.Lo's Heart of Darkness.
If you're still with me after that Russian doll of an introduction, please enjoy our chat with Jason where he gives us some insight into his own musical origins, as well as the ever important advice to value your crew no matter what role they pay.
Editor's note: The following quotes are edited for length and clarity.
The Musical Origins of Jason Bergh
Screenshot from The Greatest Love Story Never Told
Amazon
"Yeah, I think for me, music is such a important part of my life.
I was lucky I had parents that played incredible music in the house and for me, introduced me to incredible music from all over the world kind of growing up. So music has always been a big part of me, and also it's a huge part of film and filmmaking and it helps set tones and evoke emotions.
And so I'm obsessed with music, and when I was younger—18, 19 years old—I was lucky enough to work for this magazine in New York called The Fridge Magazine, and we used to put on music festivals where we'd bring action sports and skateboarding festivals with musicians. We'd go up from Brooklyn to Vermont and we'd put together festivals.
And so it was very much documenting musicians. I think I shot an Eminem show, I think before even his first record came out on stage at Mount Snow in Vermont in a warehouse. So I've always just been very drawn to musicians. The process, the creativity behind it, the performance, just from writing a record to performing a record and everything in between has just been fascinating to me.
I've been shooting for, I mean, I've had a camera in my hand since I was probably 12 years old in some way, shape. or form.
Whether it's an old Canon 81 shooting stills and developing the film. And I had a dark room in my basement, kind of a makeshift dark room, and my dad had an enlarger from when he was younger. I remember he basically, he just kind of saw that I was interested in taking photos and telling stories and he was like, well, I think it'd be really cool for you learn how to process this film and there's so many different things and aspects that you can do when you process film, the dodging, the burning, the exposures, and all this.
I think that's where my obsession for filmmaking really begun is just understanding there's a whole process here, and that was kind of my entree into it."
The Camera Kit for 'The Greatest Love Story Never Told'
"So camera wise, for a lot of the stuff that was happening during the filming of [Jennifer Lopez's] movie, This is Me Now, we had two Sony Venices. They were rigged up on easy rigs, they get kind of heavy. And then I had the vintage Cooke S4 lenses, and we stuck a lot on, there's a lot of stuff on the 75, I believe the 35 or somewhere in that 35 range might be a 37 for the S4s.
I love doing that. I love showing the scope of where we are and then mixing that with a closeup kind of shot so you understand the environment that you're in. And then the next shot you see is kind of the intimate shot that's right there and you're brought into that. And our DP, Alex Paul, is incredible, who I love, who I've worked with in the past, we talked a lot about that when we were coming up.
I wanted these big bird's eye shots, but these big bird's eye shots aren't on cranes. Literally going to the GE teams on the big movie, I'm like, 'Hey, do you guys have a ladder? Can we borrow a ladder?'
They're like, 'yeah, take a ladder.' So we're grabbing ladders, we're running, putting them into places, and then we're climbing up on top of the ladders with a sandbag or of sorts that's on top of the ladder and you got the camera on top of it and micro force zooms kind of going in.
That's tough, right? Because you got to get those shots, but you don't have a lot of time because when you're making docs, it's not like you could say, 'Hey, can you redo that?' You got to be able to be able to switch, get the micro force off and get your primes back on and be able to switch pretty fast. And that comes from the incredible assistant cameras, first acs, second acs, and third acs that were just on point. And we knew we got to switch, we're switch swinging the lens, boom, got, we already say, okay, how fast can we swing the lens?
And sometimes we'd be like, all right, this one's going to be like 45 seconds, or this one's going to be a minute and a half, or, oh, I can swing this one in 10 seconds. And then you kind of look and you're like, okay, well I can get this shot. Then you got to kind of plan, okay, if this lens is going to take this long to switch, you got to replan where you are and what you're doing based on that."
Jason Bergh on the Importance of Respecting Your Crew
Screenshot from The Greatest Love Story Never Told
Amazon
"I mean, we're nothing about crew. Crew is the heartbeat of any project that you're on. Every single person from the PA to the executive producers, everybody needs to be respected and needs to be treated the way that you would want to be treated.
I'm so lucky because we had such a wonderful family-like crew on this, and I was reading a post at someone the Post the other day, and Natalie, one of our first acs was just like, I'm miss hearing Jason's banter on the comms because you also, when you're on the comms, sometimes it's intense and I have a tendency to just throw a joke in there or just say, how lucky are we to be doing what we're doing just to keep everyone, it gets intense when you're in these scenes and you need to break through the intensity a little bit throughout the day.
We all were a PA at some point in our career and PAs are the future of our business, and they are there learning and they're there trying to soak in as much knowledge as they possibly can, and they're on their come up in a business that's already tough. And that's why you try to just, at least for me, I try to when I'm in control and I try to fix the things that I saw were broken when I was coming in."
The Ebb and Flow of Shooting a Doc about a Shoot
"There was tons of meetings beforehand, understanding what was happening and what was taking place as far as her making her film This is Me Now.
We did a ton of research. We read the scripts, we talk to people, and we try to figure out what's happening. And then on the day before, every day at night before, I'll reread the sides and really just try to understand what's happening on that specific day. And then that's when I'll make the plan with a DP will come in the morning and say, 'okay, well, let's concentrate on these lenses for the day, or this is how we're going to move, or we got rain coming today. How do we play that into the story? And so we just going with the flow, right?'
Because again, with docs, you can't ask to do things twice, so you have to be ready and go with the flow. So yes, we do plan, but a lot of it is found during the day and you got to be kind of open as a filmmaker to be able to just let things find you while you're doing what you're doing throughout the day, but you also have to search for it and look for it. I hope that makes sense. It's a combination of things.
Those are the documentaries that I learned when things happen and phone call happens and I changes the trajectory of your story, and then now you got to go and follow that kind of story as that's happening. And that's not scripted. You can't script that. That's just real life happening, and you have to be so aware and so in tune to what's going on that you are able to pivot.
That's the difference I think with docs is that things can change in a matter of a second, and if you're not prepared and always ready, and sometimes I come home at the end of the night and literally I make it to my bed and I'm fully clothed and I'll just sleep. I've been thinking so hard all day and trying to be ahead of it. You always got to be steps ahead and your preparation and how you get down. So yeah, I hope that answers the question.
Yeah, I mean, we had a fantastic editorial team led by Lindsay Utz, Grace Zahrah, Lenny Masina, Jenn Horvath, Elizabeth Maria Barrett. They are the best of the best. We basically, we shot everything and yes, I don't look too much at dailies because I'm still obsessive of what I'm getting throughout the day and taking notes. I'm always taking notes throughout the day of things that stood out to me."
Jason's Advice to Future Filmmakers
Jason Bergh
"I think advice for filmmakers is always based on that specific filmmaker that asks me just based on who they are and what they're doing and what they want to do.
But I think for me, and it's funny that we're on No Film School, but for me, and again, this advice doesn't go to everyone, but from my piece of advice is don't go to film school and get a business degree or some sort of business degree because you as filmmakers, we are our own business and it doesn't matter if we work in a company, it doesn't matter if we work at a production company or an agency or whatever.
As filmmakers, we are our own business and we need to know how to operate our business or we get taken advantage of. And so you can learn film as a PA and especially now with YouTube and all of the things, you can learn all the things on set. I think being a PA for a year, you can learn a lot, probably more than a year in college as far as going to film school.
Yeah, film school right now, I think you could look at the Chapman's and the NYU's amazing institutions, but they're 90 grand a year. To me, it's like if you have someone that's going to pay 90 grand a year, I would say, well take that 90 grand and put that into a budget for a film, and you can make a film for $90,000.
You can do it. People do it all the time."
The Greatest Love Story Never Told is now streaming on Amazon Prime.