From idea to ‘Action!’: Jordan Peele, Rian Johnson, others reveal personal visions
LOS ANGELES — Nothing gets a group of directors energized quite like talking about a fruitful collaboration, whether with a stunt coordinator or an actor or cinematographer — even if it means making them fearful.
For Jordan Peele, writer-director of the introspective alien-hunting adventure story “Nope,” working with cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema was key. He created a new camera system for day-for-night shooting so that some of the film’s most atmospheric nighttime scenes were actually shot during the day.
“I spoke with Hoyte a lot, and this was probably the first film where I really did talk to the cinematographer like a performer,” Peele says. “And there’s a meta aspect; I have a cinematographer in the film, but also there was so much about this movie that we’re making, we’re doing the same thing these characters are. We’re trying to capture the uncapturable, trying to capture the spectacle.
“So with Hoyte, when he’s operating the camera, I needed him to sort of feel the fear; we wanted to have a little bit of that sensibility how ‘Jaws’ feels,” Peele says, “they’re just hanging on by their fingernails to stay on the boat and catch [the shark]. So we wanted to have this feeling like it’s just as hard for us to get this shot of the UFO as it is for our characters.”
Other collaborations are far less tangible. “It feels like kind of putting a frame around smoke,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” filmmaker Rian Johnson says of writer-director Charlotte Wells’ evocative, ephemeral father-daughter drama “Aftersun,” a story
