ambition greed and a guy named willy willy shakespeare
by the pricking of my thumbs something wicked this way comes
our version of macbeth made shakespeare accessible the way i've always looked at the film is that it
doesn't take place in any physical place it takes place in the minds of the characters in
the psychological reality macbeth has been done in many forms and many time periods
but we were inspired by joel's vision which was this highly defined black and white and
very geometric and very architectural and that's what helped us come up with a set
of rules on macbeth it's fascinating is i don't know i think it's the first time i worked with
a husband and wife team so that was that was interesting just watching the two of them how they
operate they're two halves of the same person i mean they rely on each other and trust each other
there's both brilliant brilliant artists and care about the work
joel really wanted the language to be very specific and very clear and he really wanted
the actors and their ability to pull these scenes off and make the language sing and
make it real at the same time if chance will have me king white chance may crown me without meister
come on come me it's important for joel in films to usually establish visual themes well verbal
themes and auditory themes he's just brilliant he's one of the most if not the most brilliant
filmmaker i've worked with period there are a lot of things about working with joel that are unique
compared to working with other filmmakers joel is known for really preparing well for
pretty much the whole process he had this story and he had the visuals already in his head
seeing how joel saw it was a master class in filmmaking
i had done a number of movies with joel and ethan so i had a pretty good sense of what
kinds of actors he liked and at this point we had francis mcdormand and once you start
thinking about who can play opposite her and hold their own and has had classical training
it was a very very short list and then when denzel said he would do it it was kind of
a miracle because he's classically trained and he's a huge movie star
i mean he's a giant so that was kind of a dream come true duncan comes here tonight
look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it leave all the rest to me
she was amazing amazing she's brilliant brilliant and a lovely lovely woman lovely woman
there was no color on sets there was only a dress or two that francis mcdonald was wearing
which were in color but otherwise everything was black and white so when the actors came and said
they were really aware of what it looks like all was in black and white all on sound stages
it's just got these very exaggerated abstractions sometimes that come from the sets it was kind
of obvious it has to be black and white because black and white already introduced some kind of
abstraction you see it's uh you're not connected to reality in some ways with black and white
you have already a distance double double toilet trouble fire burn and cord and bubble
yeah with the design of the sets being so abstract i never felt the need that i needed to have any
muted color at all and just to move quickly it was just easier to paint in grays i've done another
black and white movie and for hair what you want to do is you're not dealing with color so you want
to have shadows and reflection and those are your things you're working with light or dark shiny or
not shiny designing a film that's in black and white was hugely important texture and textiles
and embroidery and layering and aging all these different tools worked really well in this form
of black and white will all great neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hands it always came
to the way i would light it we never really know if it's day or night and it's really in the play
so what if we play with this idea of not knowing or if there is a transition that you can see
going from there tonight it was the first thing just to be kind of ambiguous with the light
the shadows are very sharp and i use theater light in fact
i didn't use any movie light it was the light you used for rock and roll concert things without all
remedy should be without regard what's done is done we have scorched the snake not killed it
the way the film that joel brilliantly made that francis brilliantly played it moves
it really moves you understand what it is and he took his time and got it right joel talked to us
about how he wanted to make macbeth into a film while preserving the theatrical experience of
it so he was going to use filmic influences mainly from german expressionism to turn this into a film
the format choice that the movie was shot in 2d backdrops that kind of looked like backdrops in
the real theaters and all the artistic choices that were made would lead to a little bit of an
abstraction especially in the sequences where
we are not entirely sure what is reality and what is not adds to that level of stage performance
so it's a combination of backdrops painted backings nets screams and stuff like that
are you a man i and a bold one that dare look upon that which might have called the devil an academy
uframe was about the power of the close-up it's a fabulous format and you know seriously when you
have denzel's face in academy it feels a frame and it's it's already very strong and francis
is the same you know such a presence being in the academy framing and being able to be in dialogue
and to draw with joel you could design the sets for those parameters it was designed to leave you
not in a real place gravity isn't quite working right and you're unsettled by this as a viewer
what we're all doing is contributing to a framed piece of art that joel is creating
what we were creating with the costumes were sort of chess pieces all the styles
the costumes and everything were just solid edges shapes triangular conical
cylinder and the way people sort of moved around the set were like chess characters i based it
on things that would be flattering first to francis mcdormand and to denzel washington
that's one of the reasons why there's lattice work in the chest and on the shoulders of the armor and
there's this tufting technique that we used on the under armour and a quilting technique that we used
in the sleeves and it's all in an effort to create interest without being distracting in close-ups
and then it was about shapes how can i bring some tension to the image yeah here's a spot
out i say but it was uh trying to find a balance where they have to work together the lines and the
acting and the light are in sync he kind of gives a very clear idea of what the lighting is supposed
to be on set and that kind of dictates also what we're going to be working with later so whatever
we do needs to fit into his lighting scheme it was also bruno's idea which i thought was fantastic
let's start painting the shadows into the sets all men else i have avoided thee but get thee back
my soul is too much charged with blood of line already
francis he's brilliant obviously and passionate i love her she's a beast and so am i so it was a
great uh we wouldn't call it a battle because it was a concert it's just two forces coming
together i was getting ready to say for good but not for good for evil but we did it well
i don't think it gets better than working with bruno as a dp what bruno brings to it is just this
incredible cinematic history i mean he's a walking encyclopedia i had a wonderful relationship with
the cinematographer because he couldn't beat me to work if he was there at five i'm like i've
been here two hours i would do those speeches and soliloquies over and over our collaboration with
bruno was far closer this time than it was on the last movie because he was involved a lot more in
the in the post process it was fun working with them and they they were fabulous he would bounce
ideas off of us and ask things that he would like to try out and see what stuff looks like so it was
a kind of an ongoing process and say oh why why don't we do this or that alex and michael uh the
east side effects guys they have a collaboration with joel and they've been i think this is like
their third or fourth movie with him on this movie we started turning stuff over to them
almost immediately and that really really helped us because there are so many sequences in the film
where it's kind of a conversation with the vfx department we couldn't finish cuts of scenes until
the vfx were kind of at a certain place and so the vfx had to kind of inform the edit of certain
scenes so we had to kind of go back and forth with them a lot and they really made that easy
you remember in the apparition room when the three witches are talking to him
the cold run is obviously we didn't have water on set so the cauldron is totally
visual effect working together with the dp reno del bonnell was a great experience
for me this time was the first one where he was actually able to work completely in
a sound stage which he's known for because he likes to control the lighting to the nth degree
so here he could really shine and show us what he's capable of we tried to do
as much in camera as we could it was not like bringing multiple cameras and like 3d things
it was just like no one carrying that then we sorted out later in post and i think there
ended up being over like 400 vfx shots which for a film of this size is a lot some are very complex
the end the crows and everything is all visual effect they did an amazing job
the opportunity to work with joel and francis on this project in particular was one i couldn't
miss to follow joel and to see how he works and the level of concentration and preparation was a
sight to see so it was one of the best experiences i've had as an author joel surrounded himself with
these other artists that wanted nothing more but to participate in his creation of this world and
i think that as an audience member i hope that you see that i'm really proud of it i think it's
enormously uh beautiful i feel like i've done my job well it was very special the
time to worry about flying is when you're on the ground you don't trust a pilot don't go we were
flown around by the most brilliant pilot in the business joel cohen and a brilliant
co-pilot francis mcdormand so i knew i was in good hands and i felt free to try anything
what a formal behind the scenes we have here a lot of really great things to learn from things
that you would find in pre-production production and post-production all facets of production
of filmmaking and the process of filmmaking so it's really cool to get this from uh phenomenal
filmmakers uh like uh joel cohen as well as uh being a team with his wife and even having denzel
washington here as the lead i mean this film is just chalk filled with academy award winners
and just classic actors classically trained actors to even learn from so i hope there's a lot of
really cool stuff that you paid attention to here with a lot of really old artistic
expressionism uh that you would find in like old french new wave films and stuff like that um
using a lot of like old with the new on here even with this black and white and the aspect ratio
and everything like that it's just phenomenal all the really cool stuff that they were able to
put together all this uh classic filmmaking put all together with theater play type of attitude
in in the whole filmmaking and the process of the behind the scenes and even working with
the actors so it's really cool to see this kind of stuff so go ahead and hit the like
and subscribe button if you like these types of videos and did you see tragedy of macbeth yet
it's on my list to go ahead and see this weekend so let me know down in the comments down below
your thoughts about this film and anything that you learned here that you that actually stood out
to you that you never knew that were even part of filmmaking did you know they even used some
visual effects and some of these shots here they were showing some old techniques with uh
some new techniques put all together so go ahead comment down below and i'll see you here next time
don't forget to hit the like button subscribe button and i'll see you here next time later