When Catherine Hardwicke made her move into direction, it was after nearly 15 years of making other directors’ pictures look good (Three Kings, Vanilla Sky). As a first-time writer/director she threw her skill set into a new gear. Visually, Thirteen relied less on Hardwicke’s track record as a top production designer and instead leveraged a confidence in the richness coaxed from 16mm and the impact of a handheld camera. Hardwicke’s Lords of Dogtown promises to be no less kinetic.
F&V: How do you work with the cinematographer?
On Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown, Elliot (Davis) and I spent many Sundays discussing the shots for the upcoming week. I rehearsed the scenes with the actors, either on the actual locations or at my house (with the furniture rearranged to simulate the location), so I had a sense of what the actors were going to do. I also had floor plans from the art department and we both had been to the location at least a couple of times, discussing angles. So on the weekends, we would prepare a shot list with all our ideas. I would usually have an idea for a moving master and a few important details. Elliot always came up with additional great ideas for effective angles, speeds and lenses.
F&V: Since you came out of a production design background, how do you work with the production designer?
The production designer on Lords of Dogtown was Chris Gorak. We go way back – I had hired Chris straight out of architecture school to be my PA on Tombstone. He was so talented and prepared and fantastic to work with, that by the end of the film, he had earned the title of Art Director. We worked together on a couple more films, and he then went on to art direct mega-budget movies [The Man Who Wasn’t There, Fight Club] and production design several distinctive films [Blade: Trinity, The Clearing]. Chris, Elliot, and I are all trained architects – we have a common language, a short hand. It was just an easy flow.
F&V: What does your background in art give you as a director? What have you taken from your experiences as production designer of high-profile movies that you apply to your directing style?
I’ve worked in color, composition and perspective my whole life, so I guess that’s just a part of me. As a production designer, I worked with first time directors as well as very accomplished directors. I tried to watch and learn from each situation. Richard Linklater specifically gave me this advice: After you yell "cut," do not talk to the cameraman or the costume designer or anyone else – go straight to the actors and talk to them about their performance. This reinforced a lesson I’d learned early on: I could work my ass off on the all the details of the set design, have the greatest looking spaces – but none of it mattered in the final film if you didn’t believe the actors and the moments unfolding on the screen.
F&V: Your style seems to be based in a kind of low-tech, cinema verite look. Can you explain the choices you make in terms of the look you achieve?
I guess it’s just a personal thing: I don’t relate as well to static, precise, slick camera-work. The two movies I’ve done have both been about teenagers and teenage energy and locked-down shots don’t seem to carry that energy. Of course, both films (especially Thirteen) were shot on a brutal schedule, and handheld is much faster and cheaper than using dollies, cranes, etc. Elliot Davis is such an intuitive cameraman that by holding the camera, he can respond organically to the actors as the scene unfolds.
F&V: What are we going to see in Lords of Dogtown – a focus on teen boys instead of teen girls?
We’ve got teen boys and a handful of teen girls, but the boys are the focus. It’s a story of a rag-tag group of kids from dysfunctional homes that found something they were good at – skateboarding. They excelled and in the process gave birth to extreme sports, became famous, and broke apart.
My first job as a production designer was on the infamous '80’s skateboard movie Thrashin. I was crazy about Stacy Peralta’s documentary Dogtown and Z-boys and jumped at the chance to direct this film.
F&V: I see on imdb that you’re working on Burden and Vivaldi. I’ve also heard that you’re working on Sixteen. Sounds ambitious! What can you tell us about the projects?
Burden doesn’t seem to be happening any more, Vivaldi is in progress (the script is being rewritten) and I don’t know anything about Sixteen. If you figure out what it is, let me know.
In the meantime, I’m working on several other possible projects. But right now I’m on the mix stage at Sony doing a temp dub for an audience preview for Lords of Dogtown. We’ll be finished with all the color timing, scoring, etc. by the end of March.