Crew Calls Production of 'The Revenant' a Living Hell: When Is a Director Asking for Too Much?
Last week, the first trailer for The Revenant took the internet by storm, but Chivo's medium format cinematography is far from the only story emerging from the trenches of the production.
In a particularly concerning report from The Hollywood Reporter, Kim Masters outlines a laundry list of issues that have apparently plagued Alejandro G. Iñárritu's followup to the highly-acclaimed Birdman. These issues range from the project going significantly over schedule and over budget (it was scheduled to wrap in March, but it's currently still shooting halfway around the world from where it started), to a conflict between the director and producer that lead to communication breakdowns and wasted time in particularly foreboding conditions.
Most troublingly, however, are reports that cast and crew safety was jeopardized, although this is disputed by both the studio and several crew members. In addition, there are reports that upwards of 20 crew members quit the production outright, or were fired. One anonymous crew member even went so far as to call their experience on the production "a living hell."
Of course, the wilderness of Alberta is not a particularly welcoming place in the dead of winter, as evidenced by reports that temperatures on the production often fell below -25 degrees, with it feeling significantly colder with wind chill. Then, when you factor in that the film was shot in sequence and only in natural light, it's no surprise that the production was extremely challenging for everybody involved. However, it's incidents like the following that have some people questioning the ethicality of the production in general.
Leaving little time for the crew to prepare, Inarritu decided that a naked character should be dragged along the ground. The director remembers being concerned about the actor's genitals and laying down plastic sheeting to protect him. "I asked him several times, 'Are you fine?' " says Inarritu. Each time he asked, he says the actor replied that he was prepared to try another take. "I was super considerate because he was a nice, 22-year-old guy," says Inarritu. While crew members say the actor was in pain, Inarritu dismisses that as "a lie."
Despite the concerns being raised about crew safety, both the studio and other high-ranking crew members insist that safety was a top priority and that industry standard safety guidelines were followed at all times throughout the process. And despite these concerns, the director stands by his decision to shoot the film the way he did.
Some crewmembers believe a lot of misery could have been avoided — and money saved — if at least some parts of the movie had been conceived with computer-generated effects. "That's exactly what I didn't want," counters Inarritu. "If we ended up in greenscreen with coffee and everybody having a good time, everybody will be happy, but most likely the film would be a piece of shit." Revenant is about survival, he says, and the actors and crew benefited from having to make it in nature. "When you see the film, you will see the scale of it," promises Inarritu. "And you will say, 'Wow.'"
Personally, this feels more like a mismatch of expectations than anything else. It seems like communication wasn't where it should have been between key members of the production, which lead to some members of the crew perhaps having different expectations than what they were ultimately asked to endure. If that's the case, then somebody higher up in the production should absolutely be held responsible. When it comes to productions like this, the people who participate need to know exactly what they're getting themselves into.
Regardless of the outcome of these complaints, the whole ordeal raises some complicated questions about the filmmaking process when it's taken to the extremes. Where do you draw the line when it comes to the human cost of producing an ambitious film? How far is too far when it comes to getting the shot and making great films, even if standard safety protocols are followed? If cast and crew members sign up for a production that is going to be rough, and they're well informed about the potential challenges, is it fair if they complain when it turns out to be rough?
What do you think? Did Iñárritu and his team take this concept and production too far, or is this just the cost of creating ambitious films? Share your thoughts with us down in the comments.
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.