Oscar-winning directors Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin dive into one of their favorite scenes from their first scripted feature 'Nyad.' Get their full breakdown of the historic 110-mile swim scene, from shooting the sequences underwater to working with Annette Bening and Jodie Foster to bring this story to life.Watch NYAD on Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/NYADDirector: Juliet LopezAssociate Producer: Rafael VasquezLocal PM: Sam PopeDP: Nicholas SavanderCam Op: Ryan SheetsCam Op: Nick Koldenhoven1st AC: Ben DannPA/Teleprompter: Garrett LeRoyGrip: Sasha MotivalaGaffer: Dan CourtrightSound: Connery JohnsonPhotographer: Ricky MiddlesworthTalent Booker: Meredith JudkinsVanity Fair Director of Content: Lane WilliamsonNetflix Producer: Andrew SandlerNetflix Creative Content Manager: Cori SalinasNetflix Creative Content Manager: Jon DeatonPhoto Campaign Manager: Alex KangNetflix Manager, Film Publicity: Jennifer McCannA huge thanks to the Netflix team and the local Jackson, WY crew for facilitating this shoot.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 I used to think shooting in the Alpine
00:01 or shooting up on El Cap was difficult,
00:04 but water is an entirely different beast.
00:07 For some reason, we didn't really talk about that
00:09 before we started making this film.
00:10 - Hi, I'm Chai Vasarely.
00:12 - And I'm Jimmy Chin.
00:13 - We are the directors of "Naiad,"
00:14 and today we're gonna be breaking down
00:16 one of our favorite scenes from the film.
00:18 - This is "Notes on a Scene."
00:19 - Look over there. - I can make it up.
00:20 - Look over there, you see that?
00:21 - I'm not getting out of--
00:22 - You see that, the horizon?
00:23 Look at the horizon.
00:25 You see it?
00:26 (moaning)
00:28 - Is it the sun?
00:30 - No, that's not the sunbeam.
00:33 Those are the lights at Key West.
00:36 Most of this water work was filmed in a tank
00:39 in the Dominican Republic.
00:40 It's a film stage, and it's a very, very large pool,
00:43 you know, which is about four feet deep everywhere,
00:46 except for the very middle, which is about 20 feet deep.
00:48 It's surrounded by blue screen,
00:49 except for one side, which is an infinity pool,
00:52 which you can see out to the ocean.
00:54 So if there were no visual effects on this,
00:56 you would see a blue screen basically like that
00:59 at the edges of the pool.
01:02 And then because we had those blue screens up,
01:05 we were able to put in, you know, Key West,
01:08 as well as the night sky that's all up here.
01:12 - That's it, that's it.
01:25 - I'm never going to put that mask on again.
01:26 - Before we even started filming,
01:28 we knew we had all these night scenes.
01:30 And so when we designed the boat,
01:33 we had a lighting designer go through.
01:35 We knew we needed a light on Bonnie.
01:38 We knew we needed lights to illuminate inside the cabin.
01:42 Here's lights.
01:43 But the biggest thing was that we knew that John Bartlett,
01:47 the actual navigator, had created an LED lane
01:52 so that Diana could swim as perfectly of a straight line
01:56 parallel to the boat as possible.
01:58 He had these LED lanes built
02:03 that we could adjust on a dimmer.
02:05 And that was huge 'cause that allowed us
02:07 to have like a key light underwater.
02:10 When Diana's swimming at night,
02:12 you could actually see her face.
02:14 So we built a giant platform
02:16 that basically parallels the boat.
02:19 And on it, we had two huge dollies,
02:22 one holding a 70-foot technocrane
02:25 and another one holding a 50-foot technocrane.
02:28 We were able to kind of shoot all these different angles,
02:31 especially down low along the water.
02:33 We had this thing called a hydra head
02:35 where you could actually get it into the water.
02:37 Pizzucarini, who is literally like Neptune,
02:40 he would go underwater and swim the length of this tank
02:45 without coming up for air.
02:48 And he would literally swim back and forth underneath,
02:50 filming with his camera setup.
02:52 - It's like Merman. - Merman.
02:54 - Except for he wouldn't really have a snorkel.
02:56 - No, no, he'd have one, but he wouldn't use it.
02:59 - Yeah, he wouldn't use it. - He just wouldn't use it.
03:01 (Diana retching)
03:03 - Annette was really clear in her intention
03:11 to show a 64-year-old woman as a real person.
03:15 And so Diana actually achieved her swim when she was 64,
03:18 and Annette was 64 when she played the part.
03:21 And Annette insisted on having absolutely no touch-ups,
03:25 no VizFX touch-ups to her body or to her face,
03:28 except for when we had to show the extreme kind of effect
03:33 of 40 hours in the water on your face and your body.
03:36 And Annette's wearing probably four hours of makeup
03:39 to get her face that swollen.
03:40 We had a few makeup looks,
03:42 which were like 17 hours in the water,
03:45 30 hours in the water, 50 hours in the water,
03:48 and then jellyfish.
03:49 You know, that was its own thing.
03:50 You know, we had a really, really talented
03:52 prosthetics person.
03:53 His name's Corey Castellano,
03:55 and he worked with Annette to figure out,
03:57 you know, to fit the prosthetics.
03:59 And so basically, Annette had prosthetics here
04:01 and here in her cheeks,
04:04 and then also in her lips right here.
04:06 And then she would sometimes use a gauze,
04:08 a piece of gauze inside her bottom lip,
04:10 which was her idea.
04:12 This prosthetic situation took,
04:15 like at its heaviest was four hours.
04:17 And when you look at the lips and the idea of like an actor
04:21 being able to perform with those,
04:23 with that heavy of a prosthetic,
04:24 like it's really impressive.
04:26 Come up.
04:27 That's it.
04:29 That's it.
04:30 In terms of performance, it's extraordinary.
04:35 And like Annette had already been,
04:37 it was probably like two o'clock in the morning,
04:38 and then I had to get in the water.
04:39 - A lot of it also has to do with the fact that
04:41 this film is really about building
04:43 and showing this friendship between Bonnie and Diana.
04:47 - It's really interesting,
04:49 'cause you would assume that two Hollywood veterans,
04:51 like Jodie Foster and Annette Bening,
04:53 would have been long-time friends.
04:55 And they actually were just acquaintances.
04:57 They hadn't spent, they'd never acted together.
04:59 It was still the pandemic.
05:00 So they got to know each other kind of one-on-one
05:02 with the real Bonnie Stoll and the real Diana Nyad.
05:04 And they all lived in LA,
05:06 and they kind of had their own thing that they were doing.
05:08 And I think that's where they began to develop
05:10 this very close friendship.
05:12 And like, we were quite a small crew of actors.
05:15 Like we were not a huge, a huge set production-wise,
05:17 but not in terms of acting talent.
05:19 And because of the pandemic, it was quite isolated.
05:22 I do believe that Annette and Jodie
05:24 fostered a real friendship.
05:25 And they also felt, I think, together,
05:27 a great responsibility towards the real people
05:30 they were playing.
05:31 - I think one of the things about the relationship
05:34 between Annette and Jodie that was really beautiful
05:37 to experience and watch was just the level of respect,
05:42 mutual respect they had for each other.
05:44 Jodie clearly signed on to this film,
05:47 not only because she loved the script,
05:49 but I think she really genuinely wanted to work with Annette.
05:53 And I think it was, that was reciprocal.
05:56 - Diana, look at me.
06:00 I need you to look at me.
06:01 - No.
06:01 - Look at me.
06:02 - It's so, no, did we drift?
06:06 I can make it up.
06:07 - I used to think shooting in the Alpine
06:09 or shooting up on El Cap was difficult,
06:12 but water is an entirely different beast.
06:15 For some reason, we didn't really talk about that
06:17 before we started making this film.
06:19 - I mean, I think that was the privilege
06:20 of being first-time fiction filmmakers.
06:24 - We were clueless.
06:24 - In that, you know, we're just so used to,
06:27 as non-fiction filmmakers, of extreme situations,
06:31 like just making do.
06:33 Our first day on set, we have a 450-person crew.
06:38 - I think that was the hardest part.
06:39 - Everybody's standing there.
06:41 We take our first shot.
06:44 We are told that there's not enough time
06:47 for us to take a boat out to the boat to give notes,
06:50 that we're gonna have to get on a microphone
06:53 and scream notes at Jodie Foster
06:57 as our very first 10 minutes on set
07:02 in front of 450 people.
07:05 We had to get over it really quickly,
07:07 but I mean, it was just one of those moments
07:10 where we looked at each other and we were just like...
07:12 - Come up.
07:16 That's it, that's it.
07:19 - I remember when Diana finally achieved her swim in 2013,
07:23 and I remember following that
07:24 just as like a human interest story
07:26 and being very moved by this idea of a woman
07:28 who's 64 years old, who's able to kind of achieve her dreams
07:31 and fight to achieve her dreams.
07:33 Anna Barnes, who runs our company,
07:35 I was telling them about the script I read and like,
07:37 and then this happened, and then this happened,
07:39 it really happened, then there are the jellyfish,
07:41 then there are the sharks.
07:42 And Jimmy looked at me, he's like,
07:43 "This sounds like something we would like to make."
07:47 We'd been hoping for a film, looking for a film,
07:50 which had at its center a very strong female relationship,
07:53 'cause most of our work had been about male protagonists.
07:56 And this is a story about friendship
07:58 between two gay women of a certain age.
08:01 And one woman who has got this audacious dream
08:03 and is not willing to give up, no matter what.
08:05 - And a very complicated character.
08:07 We wanted to make something that,
08:10 a film and a story that you haven't seen before.
08:13 That was always something that I think we talked about.
08:16 - After "Free Solo" won the Oscar,
08:18 we understood that we have a certain platform,
08:20 at least in nonfiction.
08:21 It just has to move the needle a little bit.
08:23 It has to make the world just a tiny bit better.
08:25 Otherwise, let's, I don't know, let's make a great rom-com.
08:29 Do you know what I mean?
08:30 'Cause if you're gonna put in the work
08:31 and we're gonna always put in the work,
08:33 it has to have some meaning.
08:34 It has to speak to us both personally,
08:36 which is that's the kind of special sauce
08:39 of the Venn diagram, and we both agree.
08:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]