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March 27, 2018 - Image 10

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The Michigan Daily

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56TH
ANNUAL
FILM
FESTIVAL

On Wednesday, Mar. 25, Academy

Award-winning
Visual
Effects

Supervisor
John
Nelson
(“Blade

Runner: 2049”) gave an illustrated

lecture on how he and his team created

some of the 1,200 visual effects shots

in his most recent Oscar triumph,

“Blade Runner: 2049.” The festival

is something of a homecoming for

Nelson, a Detroit native who attended

the University. In anticipation of the

56th installment of the Ann Arbor Film

Festival, Nelson spoke with The Daily

over the phone to discuss the festival,

his films and his career.

The Michigan Daily: So first

things first, I think some congrats are

in order, as you’re a recent Academy

Award winner. Congratulations, that’s

incredible.

John Nelson: Thank you, thank

you! It has been a week, but I think our

feet are finally sort of coming down

to Earth now, you know? It has been

a special week. You know, I won 17

years ago and I was up twice — I didn’t

win — and being nominated is a true

honor, it really is, but winning is really

something, you know?

TMD: Yeah, absolutely, and I

imagine that winning an Oscar can’t be

a feeling you ever really get used to.

JN: Yeah, it’s like, the closest thing

I can describe it as, is it’s like someone

has come up behind you with a cattle

prod and shocked you in the butt with

10,000 volts. You’re pretty electrified

from the moment you hear the outcome

because the whole night everyone is

nervous until your award — anyone

that’s up is nervous until the moment

your award is decided — and you’re

either gonna be really happy or you’re

gonna be congratulating the winner

and then going to the bar.

TMD: So just to clear the air and get

my fanboy-ish doting over with, I have

to say: “Blade Runner: 2049” was one

of my favorite films of the year. I mean,

growing up watching the original

film, it was incredible to see what you

accomplished with this sequel.

JN: Well thank you, thank you, it

was a true labor of love for everyone

because everyone had a great deal of

respect for the original movie and for

Ridley (Scott, director of the original

“Blade Runner”). We’re doubly blessed

because, you know, taking on a movie

like this is a daunting task because

you’re trying to do a sequel to a movie

that is everyone’s favorite movie and

it’s pretty difficult to do and do well,

but fortunately for us we had — our

new director Denis Villeneuve is pretty

brilliant. So you have a master painter

with the original, sort of, with Ridley,

and then you have a new master painter

with Denis. The reason the movie is

so deeply felt and so intense is really

because we have a great team — the

producers put together a great team,

and being led by Denis is really special.

TMD: Right, I can imagine. So on

the topic of the team behind the film,

if you don’t mind explaining what your

role is on a project as the Visual Effects

Supervisor, would you say that’s more

creatively focused or more technically

focused?

JN: Overwhelmingly, I think my job

is to creatively keep the movie on track,

visual-effects-wise, but half of my job is

to technically figure out things that are

either too expensive, too dangerous or

impossible to do by any other means.

I’m involved from the beginning of

pre-production and designing the shots

through principle photography and

shooting the shots for what we call our

plates. A plate is an element that you

shoot on set and then you combine it

with a bunch of other elements into

a finished shot. I’m involved in pre-

production in the design, in working

out technically how we’re going to be

fast on set because some of our (shots)

are incredibly technically challenging.

The whole point of filmmaking is that

the technique never overshadows

the creativity, right, and you try to

be creatively on-point with the story,

so whatever you do echoes the story

and drives it forward, it doesn’t call

attention to itself as a technique. So I

would say my job is probably 60 percent

creative, 40 percent technique, but the

technical aspect of my job is incredibly

challenging, and so you find a lot of

people who are half-engineer, half-

artist doing my work. I come out of the

camera department so I like to shoot a

lot of stuff, as many elements as I can

get, and you try to shoot as much as

you can during principle photography

and then in post-production you do

all the stuff that is necessary, all the

other elements that are combined

with the photographic plate you have

to generate, and in this day and age

sometimes it’s faster not to have a

photographic plate at all. I tend to, again

because I come out of camera, I tend to

like to have photographic elements — as

many as I can get — before I go the full

CG route.

TMD: One thing that really stood

out to me about the film is just how

well the environment tells the story of

what events transpired in between the

original film and “2049.” How much of

a role would you say storytelling plays

in what you do with VFX?

JN: I think it’s a tremendous thing. I

mean, everyone who works in the movie

business is good at craft and technique,

and they kind of channel all of that

craft and technique and everything

they’ve learned and everything they’re

good at into the service of storytelling.

If you’re stepping over the line and

drawing attention to yourself, it’s

probably the wrong choice, and so

I think storytelling is always on my

mind. I will never review a shot outside

of the cut of the movie, so when I get

shots back from the effects vendors

that I work with — and there are eight

VFX vendors on this shoot — in three

or four different countries, right, and

I will always look at it in the cut. The

cut is how you’re telling the story, how

you want (the film) to be perceived.

Storytelling

is
immensely

important, I mean

you look at the

cities (in the film),

but also at Joi or

Rachael, and it’s

even more important.

TMD: So speaking of Joi, her

character is involved in some of the

film’s most visually unique moments,

such as the merging scene with Joi and

Mariette, where you have them sort of

superimposed atop one another. Care

to walk us through how that scene was

put together?

JN: The merge is my favorite scene

in the movie, and that was incredibly

hard to do. It was one of those things

where, like in many creative endeavors,

you design it and then you say, “This is

gonna be good, but we have to do it.” and

then in the process of doing it you find

new things that you drill into. For us,

we shot both women separately, then

we mapped them out to CG surrogates

of themselves. Then we blended

them together and we didn’t want the

moment, the sequence to climax too

early — no pun intended — we didn’t

want the women all of a sudden to just

go like this and be locked in and be

perfect. So we had these moments, like

shots, where it would start out of sync

and at the end of the shot it would be in

sync and at the start of the next shot it

would be out of sync until this moment

where he grabs her from behind and

brings her to him and you get like three

or four shots in a row where you see one

woman’s performance, then another

woman’s performance, then their eyes

line up and they become a third woman

that also is performing. Because we

were using only computer graphics

to supplement the photography we

were filming, and we only used the

CG to create a backdrop, like when

you look through a glass of water you

see the other side of the glass, that was

the CG part. The art was in shooting

and mapping and putting those

performances together, and when the

eyes of those women line up it is truly a

magical moment. I mean, when I saw it,

I jumped out of my seat and I said, “Yes!

That is it,” and we have like three shots

in a row where that happens and it’s

really my favorite scene in the picture,

so I always have to talk about it.

TMD: Speaking as an artist, are

there any films you can think of that

have inspired you throughout your

career or influenced your work?

JN: Oh yeah, big time. You know,

I grew up in Grosse Pointe Woods,

and I was the head usher at the Vogue

Theater on Harper and Cadieux in the

East Side of Detroit. I watched “2001”

probably a hundred times, “Fantasia”

a hundred times, I think both of those

films have influenced me greatly. As

I grew up and decided to go to film

school I watched a lot of David Lean

movies, which still impress me —

Denis and I both love David Lean’s

shots which are big shots with small

people for grand scale and to show the

place of the human within this vast

landscape, right? Plus, those shots are

tremendously cinematic. John Box, the

production designer, and David Lean

they’re just — I mean, if you look at the

films he made: “Bridge Over the River

Kwai,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” all of the

others, he’s just pretty fantastic. Let’s

see, I’m a big Billy Wilder fan, I’m a big

Preston Sturges fan, I like the movies

of the ’30s, a lot of pre-code movies I

think are really interesting. I like the

Coen Brothers’ movies, I think they’re

quite good. I like Chris Nolan’s movies,

John Nelson on tech, effects
behind ‘Blade Runner 2049’

MAX MICHALSKY

Daily Arts Writer

I think they’re quite good. But you know,

Stanley Kubrick had a huge influence on me,

and I graduated from college in 1976 so I grew

up watching them. I mean, I think maybe

the first good movie I saw and realized the

potential of cinema was “On the Waterfront,”

I saw it with my family on a black and white

TV in our living room and it just blew me

away. “On the Waterfront” is really the power

of visuals, acting, directing and music all

together. It just makes this incredibly strong,

emotional, cerebral statement.

TMD: You mentioned growing up in the

Detroit area, and I know you’re a University

of Michigan alum, so why don’t we take a

moment to talk about the upcoming Ann

Arbor Film Festival?

JN: Sure, you know when I started making

movies (as a young filmmaker in Ann Arbor)

I submitted them and they were accepted

into the Film Festival. As both a screener

and a filmmaker, I was involved and I think

the AAFF is a tremendously creatively fertile

place because there are no rules. The films

that come in there are sort of oddball films

that come in at tangential angles and it’s not

like stuff you’ll see anyplace else. It’s always

different, and I think it’s incredibly visually

stimulating, I think that if you take a lot of that

experimental film — a lot of the viewpoints of

experimental film have sort of leached into

society. You get something that could be, you

know, non-narrative storytelling that could be

almost kinetic storytelling. It’s really pretty

interesting. Every year I go to the festival, I

always walk away going, “Wow, that movie

really was great,” you know what I mean?

There’s some movies I don’t like, but there’s

usually many films that I think are really,

really, really great, and that’s the great prize of

Ann Arbor: You have these things that are so

unique and unusual.

TMD: Would you say that these sort

of avant-garde, experimental films may

forecast what’s to come in the near future of

filmmaking?

JN: I think it depends. It depends on

how on the narrative cycle — like on the

classic narrative cycle — how mainstream

entertainment will buy into it. There certainly

is, with Netflix and Hulu and whatnot, there’s

more demand in other places. On HBO last

night I saw one of the shorts that I voted on

for the short films (at the Academy Awards).

It was a 20 minute or half-hour film, and in

the past those films would just get shown

for Oscar things and then never shown

again, but now it’s on HBO. Or you look at

documentaries, like all of the documentaries

were really good this year. They’re always

really good, and documentary filmmaking

used to be kind of a niche. When I was in film

school people would know about Frederick

Wiseman and other people like that, the

Maysles brothers. Now there’s a lot of really

good documentaries being done all the time,

and they’re documentaries but they also

have a real point of view. There are non-

narrative, experimental films leaching into

society — you want to know where you see it

a lot? To be honest, you see it a lot in television

commercials, in stuff like rock videos, stuff

that is just off-the-wall different. Where

being more visceral and kinetic is okay, you

see it a lot there, and that’s really sort of cool.

I remember reading this one thing on Stanley

Kubrick that he used to watch commercials

and some of them he liked quite a bit, and I

understand that. I mean, most of them are not

good, of course, but some are really interesting

in the way that they approach what they’re

doing and that’s where you see it too. It’s a

whole new world for creative entertainment

and there’s a million different places to get

it. Who knows, in the future, just like there’s

an old movie channel, Turner, maybe there’ll

be an experimental film channel and people

can go there when they want. It has an effect

when something is striking and tells a story in

a new and different way, there’s probably an

audience for it. If you can get enough people to

see it there probably will be an audience for it.

‘The Big House’

The crowd roars. That familiar voice

blares across the stadium, “Ladies and

gentlemen,
presenting
the
Michigan

marching band ... Band, take the field!” It’s

a ritual, a Saturday morning tradition, and

has been the central hub of activity in Ann

Arbor on weekends for almost a hundred

years. It’s a University football game at “The

Big House,” the largest football stadium in

North America, and now the one with an

equally large and ambitious documentary

to boot.

Filmed
in
collaboration
between

University students, Screen Arts and

Cultures professors Terri Sarris and Abé

Markus Nornes and visiting professor

Kuzahiro Soda, “The Big House” is a

complete and thorough examination of

everything that happens on any given

football Saturday, both on and off the field.

The film features a number of segments,

all of which are done in a style that places

the viewing audience within the action to a

startling degree. We follow, at various times,

the band preparing to make its journey

before the game, the preparations made

by stadium staff for the visiting opponent,

the parties and antics of students in the

hours preceding the event and the trials

and tribulations of the viewers watching

the game from the stands as it unfolds. All

this, and much more. “The Big House” is

about as complete a depiction of a football

Saturday in Ann Arbor as one could possibly

hope for. The only facet of the day that

appears to be missing is the experience of

the players themselves, which doubtlessly

seems like one of the few places in which

the filmmakers might have had an access

problem.

Although the various scenes of life in the

stadium are interesting, strangely enough, it

is when “The Big House” leaves home that

the film truly soars. The most engaging and

interesting segments of the film are the

one’s that follow the variety of characters

that populate the streets of Ann Arbor both

before and after the game. From dancers,

to people shouting about the town’s sins,

to a particularly talented and funny street

side drummer, these people bring a human

element to the film and add some variety

and humor to the film’s most entertaining

segment.

In other spots, it sometimes feels like the

movie is repeating familiar beats. There are

only so many shots of the crowd you can

show before they all begin to seem the same.

Some sequences feel like they outlive their

running time but the film refuses to move

on from them. Other times individual shots,

such as one of a kid trying to sell M&Ms

outside the arena, feel like they could be half

as long as they are. Such is the nature of this

style of filmmaking: To give the viewer a

sense of totality to what they are witnessing.

It will work for many, but there are some

who will wish the movie moved a little bit

faster.

More
than
anything
else,
without

necessarily meaning to, “The Big House”

draws attention to the fact that all of this

— the parties, the preparations, the alumni,

the donations, the pomp and circumstance

— is ultimately in service of watching a game

play out on a field. When the movie takes a

short chance to show us the view of the game

from the sideline, for a second or two the

audience might think, “All of this, for that?”

It’s to the great credit of the filmmakers

that this documentary makes no comment

on any of the scenes it is providing, but asks

the audience to draw the commentary on

their own. The movie ends with what feels

like a somewhat disconnected segment in

which University President Mark Schlissel

explains to wealthy alumni why they should

continue to donate and thanks them for

their donations. The film makes no attempt

to bridge this sequence too much with

anything that preceded it. It doesn’t need to.

The audience can do the math.

IAN HARRIS

Managing Video Editor

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Tuesday, March 27, 2018

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