Yahoo Lifestyle Artisans From ‘Gladiator II,’ ‘Blitz’ and More Talk Songs, Visual Effects and Sound at Variety FYC Fest: The Shortlist
From long-awaited sequels like “Gladiator II” to gritty historical dramas like “Blitz,” Variety’s FYC Fest: The Shortlist provides a lens into the artistic subtleties of filmmaking through dynamic conversations with the creatives behind the camera.
Led by the magazine’s senior artisans editor Jazz Tangcay, chief film critic Peter Debruge and senior entertainment technology & crafts editor Carolyn Giardina, these conversations illuminate behind-the-scenes insights on directing, visual effects, music composition and other craft elements in films such as “Gladiator II,” “Vermiglio,” “Room Taken” and “How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies.”
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‘Gladiator II’ Conversation With Composer Harry Gregson-Williams
“Gladiator 2” composer Harry Gregson-Williams wrote over 100 minutes of music for the follow-up to Ridley Scott’s 200 epic, “Gladiator.”
In approaching the film’s sequel, Gregson-Williams and Scott early conversations centered around Paul Mescal’s Lucius. “We talked about what we might do with him and how we might help tell the story of his growth from a pretty simple, straightforward chap who’s got a wife and seems to be living happily in a rural place in Northern Africa somewhere in Numidia,” Gregson-Williams explained.
Gregson-Williams also took into consideration how to incorporate Hans Zimmer’s themes from the first film. He ended up using them at two specific moments in the film. “It’s at this moment when Lucius becomes Maximus,” he revealed.
One of the first cues Gregson-Williams worked on was the “Lucius, Arishat and the Roman Invasion” cue, an action-themed piece of music that is one of the longest. He knew a big choir “would be fundamental. “I know that starting out that I’m going to be able to utilize that and that’s going to be the basis of the sonic template,” he said.
His other instruments were sourced in a field in Northern Spain that brought an authentic sound to the palette. When scoring the theme to Denzel Washington’s Macrinus character, Gregson-Williams wrote music that evoked the “slippery” traits of the character whose motives at first seem unclear. “I arranged it and orchestrated it on a flute.”
Cellist Martin Tillman played the electric cello on Macrinus’ cues. “That became a motif for him,” Gregson-Williams said, “His music is specifically not too ominous at all. We didn’t want to play our cards too openly with Macrinus. I think the fun with his character is that the audience slowly understands what a slippery snake he is. We don’t get that right out of the gate. We’re kind of curious. So his music is quite ethereal to begin with. It gets darker and darker as the movie goes on.”
‘Blitz’ Conversation With Songwriters Nicholas Britell and Taura Stinson
Steve McQueen’s inspiration for the “Winter Coat” song in “Blitz,” the key moment when Rita (Saoirse Ronan) fully expresses her emotional state during the war, came from the death of his father and the winter coat he keeps as a memory.
“There’s something very emotional about almost a coat embracing or hugging you, I thought that would be apt for that moment,” McQueen detailed. “Once someone’s gone, often what’s left behind is something they had that you have as a keepsake.”
Songwriters Nicholas Britell and Taura Stinson focused on making the moment feel comfortable for Ronan, giving her multiple options to sing in. However, Ronan ended up choosing the highest — and hardest — key for her to sing in.
Britell explained how “there’s something you can feel when someone’s emotions are connecting with a particular key … it was kind of unbelievable how she inhabited it.”
‘Vermiglio’ Conversation With Director and Producer Maura Delpero
“Vermiglio” director and producer Maura Delpero recounted how she encountered a six-year-old version of her deceased father in a dream, which sparked her creative insights into the project. What began as an exercise to process grief, she explained, evolved into significant material for “Vermiglio.”
Delpero credited both her literary studies and background in documentary filmmaking as effective artistic perspectives from which to unravel the story behind this film. Experience in documentaries contributed to conducting profound research on the subject matter while an understanding of novelistic narrative structure helped her follow the interconnected destinies of each character.
“You really have to stay in the territory,” Delpero said. “Absorb sometimes without doing anything…just being there and breathing that air in a way [that] kind of affects the film.”
‘Gladiator II’ Conversation With Special Effects Supervisor Neil Corbould
“Gladiator II” crafted nuanced visual effects to imbue the tone and feel of the ancient Roman Empire into the sequel. The production team understood director Ridley Scott’s vision for towering coliseums as built for the original film in 2000, and used changing technology to expand the world of “Gladiator.”
The overall size and scale of the movie, special effects supervisor Neil Corbould explained, was around one-third larger than the first film. Additional practical sets were built for this installment of the franchise with adjustments implemented over the course of the construction of the coliseum. The arena’s gate, for example, stands 6 meters higher than that of the original coliseum to allow for the mast of a boat to enter the space in a pivotal scene.
“Looking at the visual effects on this, I just thought it was seamless,” Corbould said. “It’s a massive step from the original.” Visual effects supervisor Mark Bakowski added how the aesthetic elements in the film centered around capturing the various vantage points of Rome and were “all added from VFX as well” to “complet[e] that movie world pretty much.”
‘Room Taken’ Conversation With Director TJ O’Grady-Peyton
Director TJ O’Grady-Peyton honed in his style for the short film “Room Taken” through the staging of actors Gabriel Adewusi and Bríd Brennan, who play a homeless man and an older blind woman that form a special bond.
“Even though this is quite fairytale-esque, believability is so important,” O’Grady-Peyton explained. “It started to click into place when we really saw the characters and actors move within the set to try and find this almost ballet-esque dance because there’s often shots where both characters are in the same shot and they’re trying to weave in and out of each other’s way.”
The house that the film takes place in was also an important consideration. O’Grady-Peyton described wanting to find something “cozy enough to feel like an authentic inner-city Dublin home but also open plan enough for the characters to not be able to bump into each other too much.”
‘Blitz’ Conversation With Production Sound Mixer John Casali and Supervising Sound Editors and Re-Recording Mixers James Harrison and Paul Cotterell
“Blitz” production sound mixer John Casali and supervising sound editors/re-recording mixers James Harrison and Paul Cotterell pulled from director Steve McQueen’s first-hand accounts of London as a starting point for approaching the film’s sound design: “He’s a Londoner, a true Londoner,” Cotterell said.
“He knows what authentic London is. He is authentic London, really, so he’s got a great way of directing. He would talk about as a kid, he’d be taken off to markets with his mum. He was basically the cart horse. He tells these great anecdotes and gives you sort of little snippets to go with and work with rather than being completely instructive.”
“It’s so refreshing to have that in spotting sessions for him to describe a scene or a memory,” Harrison added. “He paints a picture, and then he allows us to go away and come up with ideas, and that’s really quite unique.”
“How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies” Conversation With Director Pat Boonnitipat
“I thought it was going to be my last film,” said Pat Boonnitipat, director of “How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies.” The international feature, Thailand’s official submission for the 97th Academy Awards, marks the filmmaker’s first movie and has been shortlisted for the International Feature category.
Boonnitipat said the film industry in Thailand tends to be smaller and less competitive than in the United States. He explained how he had directed a TV series in the past and the producers of that project brought him onto “How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies.” Once the director received the script, he found it stirring up feelings inside him that he wanted to bring to audiences globally.
“I did not go to film school but I’m a cinephile and I would do anything to direct a movie,” Boonnitipat said. “I tried to do a lot of homework because I’ve seen a lot of great directors from Asia that had achieved that. So I looked through all the lists of classic cinema from all over the world.”
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