All language subtitles for 112 - Case Study Frost Nixon

Frost Nixon is a very interesting case study

in terms of production design

we didn't have a lot of money

we were shooting it like an independent

yet it took place in 1977

we're shooting in Los Angeles

that's where most of the movie took $600,000

that's a Fortune

200 on signature

don't worry about the money

Michael Cornblyth

who is the production designer on Apollo 13

and how the Grinch stole Christmas and Ransom

and some other projects that I did

is a great collaborator and experienced

he was excited about the fact

that there were gonna be some limitations

but it turned out there were a lot of very

very important

pivotal decisions to be made

one of them had to do

with how we were going to present the 70s

we started looking at the research photos

and it was surprising to us

they were making us laugh

because the colors were so bright

the oranges were so vivid

this is what people were wearing

and this is the way they were decorating hotels

and lobbies

and at first

I thought that was hilarious

and we should just do it

and Michael was the first one to say

you know there's an undercurrent of tragedy

and importance and pressure on this story and I'm

I'm worried we're gonna be smiling too much

about the goofy 70s background

and of course

we have to evoke it

but I think we have to be careful about it

he was right

and we tone down the palette

it's still very evocative of the period sure

but we just didn't play into the joke

of how different our sensibilities are today

from what they were in the in the 70s

that was one of the early tonal decisions

about the way that movie would look

that also influenced my sense of

of the comedy in the movie

and there is a lot of humor

but I thought Michael was right

and I decided not to play on 70s humor

not to let the hairdos be too crazy

or the miniskirts too short

and it was a very important contribution on his part

then there was another

we were working on a small sound stages in Los Angeles

where independent films get made

not the big Hollywood sound stages and

we're on a tight schedule

but we were going to need to build some sets

because we had some

some scenes with a tremendous amount of page count

and that means lots and lots of pages

and different scenes being shot

and sometimes it's more efficient

because you can shoot so much faster

on a stage that's built

than you can in a practical location

so we decided it was cost effective to build some sets

there's a very important

powerful phone call

seen between Richard Nixon in the middle of the night

in his house in Orange County

in San Clemente

and David Frost

um from his hotel suite where he's doing research

it's just seven or eight page sequence

which means it's six

seven eight minutes long

it's a scene

it's in the play

it's powerful um

kind of a turning point thematically in a lot of ways

reveals a tremendous amount

um in terms of both characters

I'll have some

a cheeseburger

that sounds good

I used to love cheeseburgers

but Doctor Longgren made me Gammapi Switch

made a cottage cheese and pineapple instead

he calls them my Hawaiian burgers

well they don't taste like burgers at all

it tastes like Styrofoam

and I went to Michael Cornblyth

the production designer

and I said you know

I would like to shoot both sides of this phone call

at once I don't want either actor

to ever feel like they're off camera I I

I want them to be acting and performing with each other

100% all of the time

I wanna be able to put two cameras on one set

and two cameras on the other set

and let these guys do what they did night after night

which is just play the hell out of the scene

well that meant that he had to build

both the San Clemente house

and the hotel suite that Frost was living in

and preparing for the interviews in

you know in close proximity

and it was a tremendous exercise in professionalism

to make that work

so that we could still light from the outside

um it influenced the kind of stage that we had to find

and even influenced

the way in which the sets were redesigned and built

so that they would look like they had the scope

the scope and scale of the real San Clemente house

but they could fit on this stage

so there's a bit of illusion in all of it

in order to facilitate this big goal I had

which was for these two actors to play the scene out

as they had on stage

night after night for a year

and Michael

he he he made it happen

and those were not the only scenes we did in those sets

we shot a lot in both of those

in both of those sets

and it was a tremendous day

I'll never forget it

four cameras

we wind up doing

um you know

that scene in

in a little less than a day

and it had been previously scheduled for a day each

uh and so it was tremendously efficient for

for our indie minded

a movie production

it was great for the actors and

and I know that all of that was made possible

because of um

Michael's you know

his professionalism

and his willingness

to compromise a little bit on his end

to help the director

you know get

get what he was looking for

and shoot in the way that he wanted to shoot

the style of Frost Nixon in my mind

needed to work in opposition to what it had begun as

which was a play

and so I wanted to shoot it in a way that was

you know much more

you know kind of a behind the scenes

look at what the Frost nicks and interviews might have

might have been like

I wanted to just give a little bit of that flavor

um and and I also didn't want

um Michael Sheen and Frank Langela

to be forced into a lot of rehearsals

they done the play so many times

and and sure

there were some rewrites and some changes

but certainly in their scenes I

I really didn't want them

um you know

falling back on their

their theater performances

which you know

as soon as they become a little bit more tired

you'd get that

so I wanted as much freshness as possible also

Michael Sheen and Frank Langela fell into a pattern

while doing the play

where they didn't talk to each other offstage

they only dealt with each other in character

that in their sort of adversarial roles

you know and they liked each other perfectly well

but they just found that as actors

the the less they communicated out of character

the more focused and interesting and specific

and effective the performances were on stage

and when I heard about that

um I decided to embrace it

and I really kept them away from one another

we had a two week rehearsal period

but I never rehearsed their scenes together ever

I would talk through those scenes

with each of them separately

and I would rehearse their scenes

and sometimes even stage them and choreograph them

uh with the

their you know

the other key characters

but I kept them away from one another

look when you're in office

you gotta do a lot of things sometimes

that are not always

in the strictest sense of the law legal

but you do them because I ran

the greater interest of the nation

right wait just so I understand correctly

are you really saying that in certain situations

the president can decide

whether it's in the best interest of the nation

and then do something illegal

I'm saying that when the president does it

that means it's not illegal

I think it brought an energy

and a sense of discovery and

and also you know

a feeling again

that we were

we're sort of witnessing something unfold

not seeing you know

a presented story

which is the experience you have when you see a play

with Frost Nixon

you know I chose a very naturalistic style

and during the course of making that movie

I almost never rehearsed

uh we set up a couple of cameras

put them in a position

and basically walked the actors in and started shooting

very rarely rehearsed

we didn't really plan the shots

I let the camera operators sort of

have a documentary experience for the first take or two

and they they would

the operators would discover

um you know

interesting pans

rack focuses uh

you know um

look sometimes they wind up photographing each other

but uh they were both very savvy and uh

and you know

they got a lot of interesting found moments

but I also had goals

um staging goals

editorial goals

certain sections

through my notation

you know we're

we're sort of meant to be

two or three lines playing together

I knew I wanted that kind of connection

I wanted a pan

camera pan you know

from one character to the other

and when it didn't happen naturally

during the course of that

the shooting with a scene like the one we

we worked with today

or many other key scenes in Frost Nixon

then I would begin to orchestra it a little bit

and as the as the day would go along

as the scene would unfold

I'd become more and more specific

about what I wanted to go for with the camera

to make sure that I was completing

um you know

that foundational set of ideas that I thought we needed

um to you know

to make the scene

um you know

come come together in a powerful way and if it

but if it happened in a spontaneous way

I get very excited about that

and I would note that on my shot list

and you know

and at the end of the day

a lot of it was about making sure that I had

at least two good looks

at every moment or line of dialogue in a scene

and then I trusted

that we could take that to the editing room

and build it

that's the first time I ever worked that way

more often it's

it's you know

it's it's carefully thought out

um and refined on the day

discovered on the day

and that's very

very exciting

but it's also

um you know

a little more of a choreographed

relationship between the actors

the camera and the objectives of the scene

it's interesting that we were talking earlier

about Cinderella Man

and breaking down the approach that I

that I took with those fights

because I wanted the different boxing matches

to be presented in a slightly different way

stylistically

to reflect something as they relate to the character

I had done a similar thing with the fires in Backdraft

where each was designed to represent

um you know

a different kind of visceral um

relationship with the fire the fear

the heroism

and when I saw Frost Nixon the play

I knew I I wanted to make it as a movie

I I kept feeling that I just wanted to jump up on stage

you know with a steady cam

and start applying camera movement and lens choices

and editorial possibilities to these incredible scenes

that Peter Morgan had written

you know that were inspired by

and sometimes directly taken from

the transcripts

the play was had an

had an intensity and a humor

I thought the combination of that

along with of course

the truth of the

of the story

in the insight on a kind of sociopolitical level

you know I just thought it was so entertaining and

and fresh and could be very

very cinematic

so Peter Morgan

always talked about it as though it was a boxing match

um and Salvatore Tortino and I

had fairly recently made Cinderella Man

only a few years before

and we talked a lot about the interview scenes

and I once again

decided that I wanted

as much as I could to differentiate the scenes

um I wanted some scenes

to remind us that it was a television show

to use the cameras a lot

in the foreground or in the background to

to give you the feeling that this was just one big

giant TV show that was

that was being put on and

and and they were sort of reduced to being

kind of characters in a program and

and then I wanted some moments to feel very much like

it was almost up

it a boxing match

it was it was combative in that way

in those instances

we would forget about the cameras

and we'd be in with them

but we'd use camera moves and pans

and jump cuts and

similar ideas that we'd learn to use in Cinderella Man

to try to give this verbal combat

the same kind of visceral intensity

and I found that it

it really worked

sometimes I played scenes

intentionally

at a kind of a distance

no singles and close UPS

profiles over the shoulders

they were feeling each other out

they weren't really connecting

I didn't I didn't want you to feel

that anybody had landed any real body blows

um there is another scene where

you know Richard Nixon is basically

you know just

just destroying

um Frost um

whatever Frost tries

Nixon is just deflecting it

and you know

so I tried to use camera movement again there

sort of moving in and pivoting with Frost

back to Nixon

and it's you know

it's Nixon who is controlling the tempo

of this conflict

and so that idea of the

sort of boxing metaphor

was something that Salvatore and I

and the editors again

Dan Hanley and Mike Hill again

they were nominated

uh you know

tried to uh

to build upon

and it was uh

it was it was very interesting

by the last

and most important scene

um it was it was simple

it was all about close UPS

it was all about the eyes

it was um you know

these are more amazing performances

that these two actors

had been honing for a year on stage

but presented in their most

subtle and intimate

um ways a performance level that was um

you know there was

um you know

entirely about

you know their innermost feelings

at that point

for Frost it was a moment of validation

and there are a couple

of shots where Michael Sheen played it beautifully

but I tried to help

just a little bit with the camera

by just shifting the camera angle

for a moment out of the

the the the

the sort of

the axis that we were on

the sort of the

his I line to frost

frost I line to Nixon

and just sort of say this is a

oh this is a

this is a different moment

and so I went for a little higher angle

and look down on him a little bit

it was almost like a

you know a separate

discrete um

a moment of revelation

that he was

he was actually gonna win this moment

he was gonna win this interview

so I'm very

very proud of the way

the choreography

in the camera work

given the fact that

there was no staging

there were you know

two men in chairs

facing each other

and yet we found ways to make it

I think subtly cinematic

and evocative

of what was going on

scene to scene

in sort of different

emotional ways

I relearned the power of the performance

and I was really glad that I made Frost Nixon

at a point in my career where I had more confidence

in terms of

the cinema of the movie

that potential

I think earlier in my life

I would have

I would have settled in on the actors too often

for too long

and instead of saving those moments

for their most

the most powerful um

opportunities in terms of just settling in

and concentrating on these actors

but I relearned that uh

there's there's

there is no more um

powerful conveyor of emotion

humor um um

you know suspense then

then what great actors

performing great dialogue can

can give a director I also

Frostington was a studio movie

it was financed by universal but um the

the agreement was that it was gonna be

it was gonna be financed

planned and shot like

like an indie and um

it it was the fastest schedule that I had dealt with

in my feature film um

career and I

I was terrified going in

and ultimately

I was energized by it

and I realized that I've

you know I've Learned so much over the years um that um

through the planning

through the preparation

uh it actually leaves me in a position to be able to

to move quicker

and there's something energizing about that

and it certainly worked for Frost Nixon

so it was a

a kind of a confidence builder for me and

and it was also just you know

a reminder that those things that you sometimes fear

actually can wind up being

you know the forces that push you to

you know another

perhaps higher creative plane