I finally got around to seeing this film recently and, if you haven’t seen this one yet, stop what you are doing right now, go to the local redbox, and rent this tonight. Seriously, it’s the best film of last year, and I don’t mind saying that in the first sentence of my review, which says a lot.
Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, this now Academy Award-winning film, stars well-known Irania actress Leila Hatami and Peyman Moadi as couple Simin and Nader. Together, they have a adolescent daughter, Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). They reside in Nader’s father’s apartment, who is essentially an invalid due to the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. When Nader refuses to leave their native country and his father, Simin demands a separation, to which he readily agrees. With Simin leaving the household, Nader hires a sitter for his father, Razieh (Sareh Bayat). However, after having to clean up an accident his father has on her first day, she tells Nader she can no longer do the job; the drive is too far, and she has religious concerns over touching his father to clean him up if he soils himself. She, however, recommends her husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini), who is out of work and deeply indebted to creditors. The following day, when Hdjat can’t make it to the house due to a court appearance, Razieh, who is pregnant, returns with her young daughter to do the work. However, she leaves his father unattended during the day for personal reasons. When Nader comes home to find his father tied to a bed and nearly at a point of death, he blows up at Razieh when she returns. The scuffle includes a slight physical interaction on his part; she, subsequently, miscarries her child. It’s left to the court and the families to decide whether Nader is responsible.
This film, made on a minuscule budget compared to even independent American films, is a powerhouse dramatic effort. The acting, directing, editing, cinematography, and most of all, wonderfully dramatic story, come together to create an engaging, passionate and engrossing film that will go down in history as a classic. It’s once in a blue moon that you get to view a film that is as truly cinematic as this, and its always a special occasion that will be savored in an your mind long after it’s running time is over.
It’s films like this that renew my hope in cinema whenever the general Hollywood “fodder” has be down about the industry. I can only hope that I can be a part of a film as special as this one day.
For those of you who don’t know, I serve as the Video/Web Specialist for a privately owned commerce company in Winston-Salem, N.C., Inmar, Inc. One of the recent projects that I worked on was a commercial spot to try to explain exactly who we are and what we do. Here’s how trying to answer that question usually goes (hang in there): We are a B2B commerce company that operates three individual, though collaborative, networks; those being Supply Chain, Healthcare and Promotions. In the Supply Chain leg of our business, we handle recalls, remarketing, reverse logistics, returns, hazardous waste management, business intelligence and supply chain consulting. For Healthcare, we operate much the same, but with emphasis on healthcare and pharmaceutical businesses. For Promotions, we reconcile and offer a multitude of services for both paper and digital coupons. Gets a bit verbose, eh?
To remedy this situation a bit, I was tasked with creating a :90 to 2 minute spot that helped condense this down and make it more manageable for the everyday person who was unfamiliar with our business. The average person, however, doesn’t always understand the intricacies of a B2B business, so what would be the best approach? Well, I thought about it for a bit, and what is the one thing we all are? Consumers. With the idea of basing the project from the point of view of the consumer and how we touch the transactions that consumers use everyday, we entered into a series of meetings with our writing team and VP of Communications. One of our writers, Steve Eller, was nominated for the actual writing of the script. Once his first draft was in, several revisions were made by various people in the company, and within about a week we had a solid script in place.
The script was to a final draft in very early August. However, a goal was set to allow our CEO to take this video with him for the GMA Executive Conference – that conference began on August 25th. The script broke down to approximately 9-11 roles, 4 locations and a voiceover underneath. I was pretty confidant in being able to find the actors, but the 4 locations, which included a residential home, grocery store, pharmacy and returns counter, would prove more difficult. Furthermore, I was directing, shooting, producing and editing the project; but, not the first time I’ve been on a tight deadline, so I was happy to take the challenge.
The first order of business was casting our lead actress, who ended up being someone I’ve worked with as both a DP and a director in the past, Lisa Sain Odom. Getting an actress, who appears in every scene of the spot, that I was comfortable with, and who, likewise, was comfortable with me, was paramount. From there, I hired out another actor I’ve worked with on several occasions, Tommy Trull. For their children, we used one of our graphic designers, Kristen Hansen’s, kids. Knowing the residential home would be the easiest location to fill, I set out asking around the office who was open to a small crew and cast taking over their home for a day. Our head writer, Shannon Hanington, graciously obliged. For help that day, I hired out longtime colleague Dan A. R. Kelly, who is literally a film production extraordinare, to be my second set of hands and eyes on set. Our writing team, Greg, Shannon and Steve, were also on hand to help out. The first and last scenes were shot at this location, and the first day proved a smooth and easy day for both cast and crew.
The second day on the books ended up being the returns counter segment. At first, I was very concerned about finding this location; well, let’s be honest, I was concerned about all the other locations outside of the residential home. But, luckily, Inmar has an in-house digital display that our clients can go through that helps show how our software and technology systems work. Steve and I went over to see if this looked close enough to what a returns counter would at a store, and thank goodness, it looked great. Being on site at our headquarters, it was easy to book this location, and the two actresses for this part were none other than our gracious host for the residential scenes, Shannon Hanington, and our Communications Intern, Karla Barnes. Outside of having to send Greg out for some tough green to match the overhead fluorescents, we had another easy setup/easy shoot day.
Now, we get to the hard locations: a grocery store and a pharmacy. After multiple false starts on both of these locations (who would have thought a grocery store and pharmacy would be so hard to get permission to shoot in? We even had a budget for the locations!), I finally found two that would work. The first, was a member of the IGA, Cedar Lodge in Thomasville, N.C., who I can’t speak highly enough of. They were so gracious and open in letting us shoot at their store, I really can’t thank them enough. Being that we needed to shoot once the store closed, our shoot day (night) for that ended up being from 8pm-midnight. Knowing I didn’t have enough in the budget to replace overheads with color balanced tubes, or cover with 1/4 magenta, I had to use the fluorescent fixtures overhead as part of the scene. I supplemented the ambience with a Jokerbug 800, gelled with full plus green, bounced into beadboard, and accented backlight with two in-house ARRI 650w fresnels, gelled with a 1/2 blue as well. For this day, as well as the pharmacy shoot, another longtime trusted film colleague was on set to be my extra set of hands and eyes, Shane D. Smith.
My supervisor found us a pharmacy in her hometown the day before we were going to loose our lead actress due to availability – what luck! The pharmacy we used was Mt. Pilot Drug in Pilot Mountain, another perfect location, and likewise, very gracious owners who didn’t mind our taking over the place for a few hours after closing. Again, we shot in the late evening, and a very similar lighting setup was used for these scenes as was done in the grocery store with the Jokerbug 800 and the ARRI 650s. Since the shoot took place over 5 separate days, over a two week period, I had already begun assembling the cut. Furthermore, I got the voiceover done by professional VO artist Mark Cardnella (http://cardnella.com/), very early on so I could layer footage as it came in. So, post on the last few scenes wasn’t too rough.
I ended up finishing the project about 3 days ahead of schedule. Of course, there were some revisions needed as with any project of this size and scope; the final revisions were submitted Thursday late evening before our CEO was to leave the following day. But, the video made it with him to the conference and, from what I heard, went over very well. That’s all that really matters in the end, and makes all the stresses of a tight deadline all the more rewarding.
For those interested, here’s a link to the finished cut:
TECH SPECS:
Camera: Sony NEX-FS700 with 18-200 stock E-mount lens
Capture Resolution: 1920×1080 24p
Post: Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 with process shot and outro graphic composed in Adobe After Effects CS6. Grading completed in Adobe Speedgrade CS6.
notesonafilm 