Middleburg Film Festival - Variety Creative Collaborators Award
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PeopleTranscript
00:00My god Saturday night. Let me tell you're in for a treat. Thank you, Jason and Eric for being here
00:05It is truly an honor to be giving you the creative collaborators award today
00:10We're just gonna rename it the best friend award
00:14Take take us back because Saturday Night Live is such an institution for many people
00:21And just part of you know, just a great part of a culture
00:25Where did the story begin for you Jason like?
00:27Was
00:28You know, we had just done the movie Juno and my agent. Thank you
00:36My my agent asked me, you know, what do you want to do next and I said look
00:41I had two dreams when I was a kid one was to direct movies
00:43But the other was to be a writer for Saturday Night Live. Do you think there's any chance that let me?
00:47guest write for like a week and and
00:51And my agent reached out to Lauren and asked and Lauren said literally yes, the young man can come to space camp
00:57and I
00:59and I did I got to spend a week there and and go through the whole experience that like writing till 5 in the
01:04morning on a Tuesday night and then being at the table read and
01:07Not knowing if your sketches gonna get in and that moment where they they walk out of Lawrence office
01:11And they literally pin a piece of paper on the wall
01:14Which and it's like a high school play. It's like that you find out whether you got in the show that way and
01:20and then of course the night of that exhilaration of
01:23Feeling it all come together and I think that's where the kernel of the idea came from because it's it's
01:28We all think of Saturday Night Live as the ensemble
01:32Cast but when you're there in person what blows you away is the ensemble of crew
01:37It's the people behind the camera that do this chaotic ballet that allows the existence of this show
01:44And I thought how do I capture this one day?
01:47Um, so for those who don't know tell us a little bit about what the film is actually about and where it's set because I
01:53Think that's that's the great part of this movie
01:56Yeah, and this is fun to talk about this one in advance because you literally cannot ruin the movie
02:06Like like this there's less to ruin than even Titanic like it's like a you know
02:11It's like it's not even gonna be like Jack and Rose on the piece of wood out there. Like
02:14People get mad
02:16When you ruin history, they're like wait and you're like, but the Titanic exactly
02:24The idea from the beginning and the idea we made was
02:27We start with Lorne Michaels at 10 p.m. On 50th Street, and it is a 90 minute straight shot
02:33To the first time anyone ever said live from New York. It's Saturday night, which is the last line of the movie and for us it was
02:41We always knew that SNL is the location but the story we want to tell is
02:46What is it like to be in your 20s and to be moments away from changing comedy and cultural history
02:54But to not know it
02:56Do you feel it and what for all these people that are about to go in 20 different directions
03:02success fame life death
03:06They're all about to spin out in every direction
03:08And there's people in there that you don't even remember. We're part of opening night
03:12you know people like Jim Henson and Billy Crystal and
03:18And to find out what their true history was with the show
03:22Eric your cinematography over the years has been incredible and on this film. It's just from that opening shot to the very end
03:30Talk about getting the call from Jason and what did he tell you that?
03:34Your next project together would be
03:36Well the first uh, I think the first time we talked about it. I was on something else. There's a 2020
03:432020 2021. Yeah, uh pandemic. Jason has just written something. I said, I just wrote something. It's a little crazy
03:48And it's about saturday night live and I want to do it in one shot
03:52And yeah, the idea was that he was going to do we were going to do the whole entire movie in one uncut shot
03:57Build a set no stitches. No cuts. No hidden anything
04:00And I said, okay
04:03Yeah, great
04:04Let's figure that out and we actually did we started r and d'ing like what that would take what that would look like like
04:09We built sets and all these things and um as time progressed
04:13We realized it'd be challenging that got put on hold. We did ghostbusters frozen empire and while we were doing
04:17That movie in the uk jason. I think we were on the train and jason said I think the next movie
04:23I think we're gonna get pick it up some pick up some steam and do
04:26And um, I don't think I want to do it one shot anymore
04:28But let's talk about how we can do it, you know a little more traditionally, but still have you know, really long take
04:32So we really make sure we feel the chaos and that we're in the middle of it. We're flying the wall
04:38And it's just it's almost real time leading right up until that last minute
04:42And then we started having conversations about um
04:46How we were going to do that and and film came up we had wanted to shoot film
04:50We're 16 and a half years old. We're going to shoot a movie. We're 16 and a half years old
04:53Film came up. We had wanted to shoot film or 16 millimeter film specifically on a movie
04:57We did about seven years ago called the front runner and we didn't for a variety of creative reasons and we always
05:04Felt that that was a lost opportunity that and we probably should have pushed for it
05:08So one of the first things jason said is and I want to shoot on 16 millimeter film. I said, okay great
05:14A little non-traditional for people to know like shooting film these days on a movie is hard enough
05:20um
05:21shooting 16 is just pretty much unheard of but you know, we did a bunch of tests and we still liked it and
05:29That's what we ended up doing and I think we really created a um
05:33The sense of the fly on the wall the energy the movement, you know, the just extreme chaos
05:39um of that 90 minutes
05:41Um, i'm going to come back to saturday night in a minute
05:43But you know as susan said in the intro, um, you have been best friends since you were teenage boys
05:49Uh eric, what do you remember about first meeting jason?
05:52uh
05:54easy
05:56He's in the room this time. It was a long time ago
06:00uh
06:01Honestly, uh, I remember another really enthusiastic kid playing with cameras
06:07I think the first time we actually met I knew of jason because he was friends with another friend of mine that he went to
06:13high school with
06:14That I was friends with since elementary school and jason the first time I met jason
06:19He was doing a stop-motion
06:21Animated lego film. Yep at his high school on a weekend when I was also there with my other friend shooting
06:28A short film so he was in one room doing stop-motion with legos and a super 8 camera
06:32We were in another you know room and and it was like and then a bunch of the we needed students
06:37For the short film and not everybody showed up on their day off on the weekend
06:41So we said hey jason we need actors come be in our be a student in the short film
06:45He's like, yeah, sure
06:46So he you know, and we started talking and that was how we stayed in touch
06:50It was really that simple. Yeah, and I played I was in the second short film too and I played death
06:55Oh, that's right. Yeah
06:57Yeah. Yeah, so he was actually through acting is what yeah, it's basically what I gave. Yeah, um, but it was uh
07:04yeah, and then it just you know, when you find somebody with a common interest that
07:08At the time you feel like is not that popular of a I mean this is mid-90s
07:12It's not that popular of a thing for kids our age, you know
07:15Making movies and particularly like super 8 or video cameras on the weekends with your friends
07:20But you find other you know like-minded people and you just gravitate toward one another and we did we stayed in touch through college years
07:27Jason, what what was it about eric that you know drew you to him and made has made him your go-to
07:34Well one he's handsome. Uh
07:36So that was that was primarily it uh
07:40Eric a lot of a lot of young people make
07:44Take their parents video cameras
07:46And and make movies and I and I certainly one of those was one of those kids
07:51Eric was shooting 16 millimeter when he was 16 years old
07:55uh, and he was already
07:58a technical genius
07:59and
08:01And just a very curious person
08:03uh
08:04Eric is a pilot
08:06and
08:07That's one of the key things that I associate with him
08:10his calmness his ability to
08:14kind of
08:15Manage a hundred things at once in his head and remain completely calm and understand at all times what the solution is
08:22and
08:23That's something that I could say now that i'm older and I can look back at who he's been for the last, you know
08:28three decades
08:29um
08:31but when we were younger
08:32what was lovely was just
08:34and in this thing that kind of continues through all of our filmmaking is
08:38It feels like i'm just making a movie with my friend
08:41and
08:42Uh, and I can't speak highly enough for that. I think you know when you're a kid you start thinking about
08:49You daydreaming about all these people that you're going to collaborate with in your life
08:52And that's what you're supposed to do as a teenager
08:54You look at the credits of movies and you see all these names and you're like
08:56I wonder if i'll get to work with them and them and them and them and them
09:00but the truth is that
09:02You're worth you're you're you're with a group of people who are all your age
09:07And you're all excited about the same thing
09:09And if you can hold on to that
09:14Nothing has brought me more joy as a filmmaker and as a result nothing has made me more true as a storyteller
09:22than
09:23Being next to eric who I've now known forever who knows everything about me
09:28and
09:30Knowing how to communicate in a way that I could never communicate with another human being
09:35and
09:36Knowing particularly how much eric cares about story
09:40One of my favorite things about eric as a cinematographer has nothing to do
09:43With how brilliant it is as lighting and shooting and lensing and all that stuff
09:48Eric does something. I don't know if there's another dpu does this
09:51Eric's one rule with his camera team
09:54Everyone must read the sides every single day
09:56He doesn't care if you're the first day seer or the loader you read the sides every day and his rule is
10:01You do that
10:02Because you need to know what story we're telling
10:05And you never know where the best idea is going to come from. It can be the loader that saves your ass that day
10:11storytelling wise and
10:14And he's family. I just love him
10:17Yeah, I love that
10:20Eric do you want to say anything to um
10:24Jason's also handsome
10:27Thank you, it's all I was looking for jesus you're handsome, too
10:31no, what look um, I can't like
10:35I don't know where to go from there from that but um
10:38my favorite thing about working with jason over the years is that we've
10:42like he said he could have worked with anybody over the years particularly after we found success and
10:48He's chose and we've chosen to learn how to tell stories on screen together
10:53and
10:54How we've evolved as storytellers
10:57And how that's paralleled us
10:59maturing as individuals
11:02And as friends has been really interesting like we would not if we were to go back and
11:06You know redo juno or any of the short films we did before then our commercials, whatever it is
11:11Um, we would not tell them the same way just because we're so different
11:14We're so evolved and mature in our storytelling, you know
11:18Because like the way we made this movie very much reflects like our current state of mind where we are in our lives now
11:23We could have made this movie years ago, maybe even seven years ago
11:26Maybe even not even when he first gave it, uh to me in 2021
11:32You know and and being able to to grow together as storytellers has been just as special
11:39um
11:40as our personal relationship if not
11:43More so in a way because so much of our personal relationship has been born out of
11:47Are these intense days and and long schedules on these films and figuring out these problems? I mean that has basically been our
11:56Relationship is trying to figure out how to get ourselves out of these really tricky situations
12:01like these extremely challenging like pressure cookers of um, you know
12:06This happened to be movies which are fun
12:07but like it's also the most intense situation like two people or a group of people can be in on a film set and
12:15In the months leading up in the months leading up, you know, that's like the incredible amounts of stress. So
12:20Like that is jason
12:24Like the relationship our relationship I feel like it's kept me alive a lot of times, you know through you know
12:29Hard points or or downturns in you know personal life
12:33You know, we always had you know
12:36Us on set, you know to work things out or distract ourselves and get that
12:43Satisfaction from working together and like that creative
12:47Energy is just it's been fantastic and i've never gotten that with anybody else
12:52Um, I love that you mentioned pressure cooker because this whole film feels like we're inside a pressure cooker. Yeah, um
12:58Um
12:59To that john batiste's music and score is so incredible
13:04Like I think when I spoke with him, he's called it the villain of the film explain
13:08To this audience what that what he meant by that
13:12Uh, you're all familiar with john batiste. I i'm presuming
13:17Uh
13:19John plays billy preston in this movie
13:22He also wrote the original score
13:24And he did something very unique in the way that we created the music for this film
13:29that is that
13:31He wrote and we recorded the entire score live on set
13:36So we would shoot
13:38from 8 to 6 p.m
13:40Uh, they were very
13:41Actually, they're relatively short days because the film was so highly choreographed
13:46And then at 6 p.m
13:48John and his band would go get into street clothes
13:51and
13:52They'd get out of their costumes
13:54And the cast and crew would stay
13:57Because they all knew what was about to happen
14:00We would our editor and nathan orloff would come back with a laptop he'd show a rough cut of a scene to john
14:06And in an instant he would just turn to one of his bandmates and go
14:11A flat a flat to g take it to a b then come back to the a flat and then turn to someone else
14:15And go I want with the shaker
14:18Chica chica chica chica chica chica chica chica and then he would just
14:22Build the score in real time on set and then he would just grab an instrument because he could play everything
14:29and
14:30start adding things and
14:33And all of a sudden you could see it
14:35You could see the scene in your head by the nature of the music and then we would take that music back into the editing
14:39Room and the recut to the music and it's it's kind of actually the most important thing to know
14:45Oddly before you watch the film because it'll change the way you watch the film
14:50Because the soundscape of the film
14:52is really critical our our
14:55Our production mixer steve morrow who's extraordinary. He's been nominated. I think the last four years
15:01There were days where he had up to 58 mics going simultaneously
15:06Like to give you an idea of how many microphones that is
15:09He had to bring a second mixing board
15:11To manage that much sound
15:14Now we've both checked he has 10 fingers
15:17But he has 58 tracks of sound and when we're at monitor and we have you know, we have headphones on and we're watching
15:26We're listening and he's bringing in all these ideas in and out
15:30In real time so that by the time we get to editing even before we get to our post mix
15:34He's created a soundscape of what the world is there that creates the chaos where he's still pointing your ears
15:40To the five things you should be hearing at any given time
15:43Amazing, right? Yeah
15:46Eric and just another thing that that jason has said earlier was the lighting
15:50Talk about your approach to lighting in this film, especially, you know, we've got jess gontro's incredible production design
15:57And how you had to work around?
16:01Yeah, well, um, you know takes place in 1975 so
16:06right off the bat I wanted to use, you know period correct lighting because
16:10the camera is
16:12The light's almost a character in the movie and what I mean is that
16:16All the light that's in the movie that's lighting the movie is in the actors is actually all built in which isn't always the case
16:23In movies, you know often you'll have built-in lighting, but you'll turn off what's around the camera
16:27And you'll bring in lights on the floor hang things and light the actors kind of more nicely with you know movie lights
16:33Um, all of our lights are in the shot and they're all built into the set and I worked out with jess in pre-production
16:40Where the light should go based on?
16:43Some shot designs that jason and I were doing in pre-production
16:47And so we got all these like for the studio. We got all the oldest lights we could find hung
16:51Um, they're all in the shot all the lights that you see in the studio studio are actually the lights lighting the scene
16:56The hallways all the built-in lights are the lights lighting the actors
17:00So we found as much as we could old lights period correct lights shot a lot of tests
17:04Jason and I look at the test say yeah that feels right
17:06No, the color is wrong because it was really about capturing, uh the feeling
17:11Of that night and and what it was like to be there
17:14Uh less than the accuracy of maybe what the visuals were
17:17So, I mean then that's like kind of where the film of it comes into because it's just capturing that feeling was was
17:24Yeah, it was so much more important to have to be
17:27transported to that moment and and know what it felt like than exactly what it looked like so
17:32um
17:33yeah, and we
17:35To answer your question. Uh, yeah, we did we went back and got as much of the old lights as we could and and
17:41Used them and it was it was challenging. It's it's not hard to find the bulbs for some of those things
17:47I need to also speak to what you pulled off, which is really impressive
17:52Because and you'll see this when you watch the movie. There's these sprawling shots that go on for minutes
17:57and
17:58And you're following there's 80 speaking roles and 80 background actors who work every single day and you're tracking everybody
18:05And eric had to light the whole movie in advance because all the lighting was built into the set
18:10So for the months as we were prepping the film and figuring out the choreography because it's kind of like a dance movie
18:16a chaotic dance movie
18:18Eric had to design the light plot of the entire we rebuilt the entire eighth and ninth floor
18:22Uh 30 rock has one 360 set
18:25And we knew we did that all the lighting was going to be built in all the cabling was going to be built in and the
18:29Camera could go anywhere for as long as it wanted
18:32and so
18:33We figured out where every actor was going to land at any given moment during the entire film in advance
18:39And then eric lit the entire set in all two stories of it
18:42So that once we started shooting no matter where the camera was the lighting was always going to be already perfect. Yeah
18:49It's so incredible. Yeah, it's chaotic
18:52But it's great because like that that's what jason's saying like I want to be able to shoot
18:57360 degrees at any given moment like that's the energy we had
19:00Like the energy on the film that you see in front of the camera was was just like the energy behind the camera
19:05It was great. The only way you could have made the movie
19:08So what was the biggest challenge aside from getting like, you know, the light bulbs the period accurate light bulbs like talk about
19:14Honestly, it was just pulling off the plan
19:15Yeah
19:16You know jason and like he was talking about we figured out all the blocking ahead of time while the set's being built around
19:21Us with an iphone and actors and standards and lining up the shots and trying to figure out the movie twice
19:26Yeah, we shot the movie twice
19:28So we did a reproduction cut it together made sure it worked and if once it did
19:32That's when we started designing the lighting and then you know
19:34The camera moves and sharing the camera moves with the camera team
19:37Just pulling it off was the most the night knowing if it was going to work
19:41I think was the biggest challenge because usually you can kind of on a movie set you can pivot
19:46And be like, oh that's not working
19:47Let's do this, but we were kind of locking ourselves into a lot of things here like these long moving shots
19:52Which you'll see like if they didn't work, we didn't really have a backup plan
19:56uh
19:57So in the case of like the the big long shot in the beginning of the movie, we actually did that
20:03Spent the whole first day shooting that shot
20:05Actually the day before the first day we rehearsed it the first day we shot it and then the last day on that set we
20:12Shot it again because we were much more well oiled and we thought we could do it better
20:16We had jason had a slightly better idea of how to
20:19integrate another element into it and it was it was
20:22It was amazing, you know, and every time you went to pull
20:26Pull one of those things off. It was that much more satisfying
20:30Can I speak to that?
20:32uh and
20:34Eric and i've been working together for three decades now, but we also worked with someone for the first time on this film
20:39And is the other reason why we were able to pull this off
20:43And she happens to be here today the front row and she's already upset that i'm doing this she hates me for doing this
20:50Shelly zeigler, will you stand up for a second place? Um
20:54all right, so
21:01Shelly is a first ad and if there was an oscar for ad and she'd have 10 of them. Um,
21:06uh
21:07She's done extraordinary work
21:08She made a little show called the wire you may have heard of and about a million things after that
21:13um
21:14and
21:16This is about the hardest job one could possibly do as a first ad because it is building
21:22the chaos
21:24And the reality of that world that you're about to see in this film
21:27And you're gonna start watching the movie and you're gonna go they're not gonna do this for 90 minutes
21:30Are they and it's like yeah, we do this for like 90 straight minutes
21:33um
21:36Shelly and I together cast every background actor on this movie in person
21:41They don't do that, you know
21:44we
21:45Met everyone in person. We interviewed them. We got polaroids. We labeled each person. This is a camera person
21:50This is a sound person. This is a wardrobe person. This is a makeup person then our crew
21:55Taught them all how to do all their jobs. We did a boot camp
21:59The camera guys learned how to use the ped cameras the sound people learned how to hold the booms
22:03The makeup and hair people learned how to do actual makeup and hair because they were gonna be on camera
22:07Doing people's makeup and hair
22:09and every day we'd meet at home base and we had a whiteboard and we'd draw out exactly what everyone's gonna do that day like
22:14a football coach
22:16And then we'd go do it. It got to the point where
22:20One of our camera guys rocky
22:22Uh, this is our fake camera guy
22:25Our real camera guy matt moriarty literally one of the best operators in the world goes over to rocky towards the end shoot
22:30He's like, all right rocky
22:31On this shot you're gonna move your ped camera from the stage left staverage stage, right?
22:35You're gonna start it
22:35You know you're gonna get a medium shot of guild over there
22:38I want this at the top of frame this on the left side of frame and rocky looks back at matt and goes
22:43I don't know matt. That's not a really balanced shot
22:47Like some of them like wanted to join the union at the end like they got really into it anyhow, um
22:54What eric said is true?
22:55We shot this movie twice and the first time I was in prep is they were building this set around us
23:01And the only reason we survived is because of shelly
23:05And she cares about it like a storyteller. And yeah, you should just applause for her. She's a genius. It really should
23:12Yeah
23:17So amazing well, I feel like the audience is like ready to like enjoy saturday night is there anything else you wanted to say to
23:24Set them up. I think you
23:26Don't know about the music though. I feel like they're ready. I think they're ready. Yeah
23:31Movie already. Uh
23:33I just want to say thank you to this film festival. Thank you for having us back. Uh, this is
23:40We were talking about it right before this is one of those rare film festivals where every attendee loves movies
23:47and the film festival has found a way to not be
23:52Infiltrated by all the other crap that happens at other film festivals. This is just a lovely place to see movies and we're very happy here
23:59So enjoy the movie