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