Jeff Nichols may not be a high profile filmmaker. He didn’t immediately go from indie breakout to tentpole director (though he was in talks to direct Aquaman at one point). Instead, by staying small he’s been able to maintain control. All the way from inception through post-production. He writes his movies, he directs his movies and he gets final cut on his movies.
That hasn’t held him down as an artist. His latest, Midnight Special, is his first studio picture, and he didn’t have to compromise his control to get there. It helps that his movies, which also include Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter and Mud, are very good. And for Warner Bros., it also helped that he knew how to make a marketable genre film for very little money.
Eventually Nichols will wind up doing something much bigger, and he’ll probably still have relative freedom and authority. Many filmmakers would love to get to that point. Well, he makes it sound kind of easy. Maybe it is if you have the talent. Either way, if you’re interested in reaching his ever-escalating level of success, check out the six pieces of advice culled from interviews below.
There’s Still a Benefit to Going to Film School
Nichols studied film production at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, graduating a few years behind David Gordon Green and his posse, including Jody Hill, Danny McBride and Craig Zobel, and a few years ahead of Aaron Katz and his collaborators. Like them, Nichols met a lot of people there whom he continued to work with professionally after graduation.
He explains here why he’s glad about his choice to go to UNCSA, from a 2013 interview with Crave:
I needed it. I found value in meeting all these people. They’re all my crew. They’re my creative collaborators and that’s worth paying for. And the bonus is, then they show you the lingo and everything else because yeah, sure, don’t go to film school, okay, that’s fine. Go make your movie, that’s fine too, but then if your movie’s good, then you’re going to be stepping up into more of a mechanism that’s reflected of how typical movies are made and it helps to have that knowledge. But whatever, there are a million ways to skin a cat.
Building such a team also keeps him in check as a filmmaker. Yes, he’s in control of the movie and it’s primarily his vision and baby, but he believes in filmmaking as a collaborative art and dismisses the idea that he’s an auteur. He talks about having this kind of core team — not just made up of old classmates, but that’s where it begins — in a recent interview with The Verge here:
Anyone who knows anything about making movies knows that that’s not how it works. I’ve had Chad Keith as my production designer from Take Shelter, and he did Midnight Special and he just did Loving, and he influences so many things about the way we make films. Adam Stone has [shot] all my films, and now I have Erin Binnick, who is my costume designer on Midnight Special. These are people who I hope to carry with me for my entire professional career. You can’t underestimate the impact they have when you [ask their opinion] on set, and they’re like, “let me think about that,” and they give an honest answer, because they’ve been with you forever, so they aren’t trembling in their boots because “Jeff Nichols The Auteur” is about to squirt out an amazing idea. They get it. I’m just Jeff and we’re just trying to make something honest.
There’s Also a Benefit to Just Doing It
As Nichols says above, there a million ways to skin a cat and you can just go make your movie instead of attending film school. Either way, he does think just going out and shooting something yourself is important. Here’s what he told Indiewire back in 2008 as his critically acclaimed and award-winning debut feature was about to open in theaters:
Pick a date and start shooting. The most important thing I did for Shotgun Stories was to set a start date when I had nothing to go on. It forced me to make decisions and it added momentum to a situation that otherwise wouldn’t have had it. A lot of low budget filmmaking is about creative compromise. Picking a start date initiates that process and adds accountability to all involved.
In the much more recent video below, Nichols talks about how he’d have liked to work in the studio system of the 1940s and 1950s, but the world we live in now is very different. “I’m a director because I directed a movie,” he says. “And if I have any advice for people it’s, ‘Go write something; go direct it. If that’s what you have a desire to do, go do it. If the movie stinks, just put it on the shelf and try to do it again.’”
0 comments:
Post a Comment