Some people say that "Lion" is a movie version of Google ads, but in fact it is a popular taste of the family happy film, the plot warm heart tear-jerking, exciting. The film was crafted by Garth Davies and led by a group of Hollywood outsiders, most of whom were Australian. It's the first feature film directed by Garth Davis, which was first released in North America on November 25th, and has been nominated for six nominations, including best picture at the 89th Academy Awards, the Cameraman's Highest Honor, the Cameron Golden Frog Award, four Golden Globes and two American Actors' Union nominations. So why did the film do so well? Let the following article tell you. In addition, the film has been released in China for a few days, the hospital line row film has been low, want to see or grasp it.



Source:http://www.indiewire.com/ translation: Sydney Cat

Director: Garth Davis
Photograph: Greg Fraser
摄影机：ARRI ALEXA XT，ARRI ALEXA XT M，RED EPIC DRAGON
Format: Numbers
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1

1, the story is true and attractive

When Top of the Lake first appeared at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013, See Saw producers Ian Canning and Emile Sherman (producer of The King's Speech) saw the story of Australia's Salo Blair. Blairley lost his life in Calcutta when he was 5 years old and found his loved ones again 20 years later via Google Earth. At Sundance, producers went straight to Garth Davis, co-director of Top of the Lake, for a collaboration.

They flew to Australia to meet The Story's protagonist, Blairley, and his adoptive parents, who later earned their trust and the right to adapt Blairley's memoir, The Long Way Home, before hiring Luke Davies, an Australian poet, novelist and critic who had adapted candy for See Saw. Director Davis appreciated Luke's screenplay for James Dean's film, "Life." "It's a good script, very human and very gentle, " the director said in a telephone interview.



"The story is like a myth, raw and simple, " the screenwriter said. "It's not that the adaptation is simple, it's that the emotional tone and structure contained in the story is like a fairy tale, giving an old feeling. If you're looking for a universal life experience in the world, it must be a baby's desire for safety. "The hard part of telling this story is not to get too sentimental." It should be strong," the director said. "And as an audience, you can definitely feel the moving tone of the story."

When the script took shape, See Saw took the project to Cannes in 2014, where dealers had four days to read the script, and the following tender, Weinstein International Pictures won the rights to release it for $12 million, giving See Saw a budget and more script development opportunities before filming.

2, preparation

After his next job, director Davies went to India to meet Blairley and his biological mother, and then to Tasmania to meet Saro's adoptive parents. He then persuaded the producers that the film should be filmed in part from the boy's walk, from the boy trapped on an abandoned train with no passengers on it, which finally stopped 30 hours later, 1,000 miles from his hometown of Calcutta.



"It would be crazy if it started at the end, " says the director. "Regression linearity is the most advantageous way to persuade. Saro was lost, homeless, adopted and sent to Australia, and then retrieved his loved ones via Google Earth, making it the most appropriate shot, which would overshadow the story if he wanted to do the opposite. "At that time, they had to pick the right little Indian boy to play little Saro, and the lovely Sonny Pavo stood out from the audition. Choosing a child of this age to play is risky, but they want a small, vulnerable child.

In the days leading up to the shoot, Pavo didn't know how to perform, but he quickly entered the state. "He started to understand that between 'action' and 'cut', he could get into a magical space where he could perform," the director said. "But some of the performances were really not as good as they should have been." It's up to the director to tap into the child's acting potential. "To make him feel safe," the director said. "He's never seen a movie, the first time he saw it was at Moma, at Bill Clinton's New York premiere."

At the time of filming, five-year-old actor Sonny had to show the boy's loneliness and fear on screen because of the character's demands. In an interview, the director explained how he helped the young actor improve his abilities by taking part in a series of exercises such as sports and screaming with him. The clip below shows the young actor waking up asleep in his seat on the platform and discovering that the brother he was waiting for didn't show up, before he starts searching for his brother alone in the dark city and ends up trapped on a train more than 1,600 kilometers from home. The interview is as follows.

‍‍When he wakes up alone on the train platform, how do you guide him in the next play?
‍
It's all about creating an environment where he barely reacts and I don't give him much direction. I try to create a rhythm and space, and create a sense of mystery and terror that almost slowly becomes a nightmare space.



In this scene, myself, the performance director, and others work together to create a three-dimensional platform in the dark that attracts and confuses him by making sounds. Someone will shout his name from one side, someone will make a dog bark. We will try to create this three-dimensional world around him, so that his subtle performance in the dark will make us feel that the world is putting pressure on him.

What did you say to him?

I said your brother could be anywhere, he might fall asleep under the carriage, he might be in his seat. You have to remember to look around, and when you call his name, be sure to listen.

There was a moment when he woke up on the train and he panicked. How do you guide you?

We decided to make the final scene because everyone was convinced that Sonny and I were confident that we could do it well and that we could experience the scene together.



What we do is try to play games together. We also did a lot of physics experiments to get him to hit the pillow until he was out of breath, and then we followed into the scene. We do push-ups and then set the standard of sound by screaming with him so he's not afraid to behave in this environment. The challenge for him was not to be shy and to raise the performance to such a high level. So if I scream as loudly as I can, he'll think, the director does it, and I can do it, so we build a lot of trust. It's a great adventure for us, it's a great emotional game that we have to play together.

3, survey

For filming, he conducted extensive surveys in India, from Kolkata to Madya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh, from the unique crimson landscape to Blairley's country birthplace, where he was nosed to the platforms and water towers of burhanb's stations. He spent four years obsessively tracking thousands of train station platforms until he came across newly upgraded satellite images a few weeks before the shoot.



"It's about finding the world in the movie," says the director, "creating an atmosphere and a sense of place, imagining that Saro was in those environments at the time." I looked at the picture on the storyboard and I wanted to show it on Google Earth and in the movie. "

4, two stories

Davis, an experienced advertising director, was ready to direct the long film after directing four episodes of Jane Campion's "The Top of the Lake": "I learned from Jane how to prepare for a long tv series and how to work with great actors like Holly Hunter and Peter Mullen. "

When filming began in January 2015, Davis directed and filmed "The Assassination of Bin Laden, " and Star Wars: Rogue One cinematographer Greg Fraser filmed the first half of the film as the shell of the story and the second half as the kernel of the story. "Cameras and sound design play an important role, " says the director. They used Alexa to shoot, and developed special remote machines that act as camera holders to support Alexa devices placed at the height of starring Dave Patel, but using drones with Stanicon to shoot from above is not available at this angle.

5, grasp the emotional tone of the story

Directors often feel that "there's always something spiritual under the surface of the story," he says. "I'm not at all surprised when I see real people with spiritual beliefs. It's like Saro's soul leaves the flesh every night and finds his mother and says, 'I'm here, I'm alive, I love you.' '"



The director first asked the mother-of-two to meet while investigating the hometowns of Calcutta and Blairley. She said Blairley's biological mother said her son would communicate with her regularly and that she knew he was still alive. Saro's adoptive mother had foreseen a sepia child when she was 12 years old, and she thought she was destined to adopt. Perhaps these three people have long been closely linked by spiritual perception.

6, selection - global movie stars

In the seven years since London actor Dave Patel starred in the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire at the age of 26, he has been positioned as an office computer grotesque, such as joining HBO's "Newsroom" and starring in "Foreign Hotel" and its sequels (a total of $225 million at the global box office). But it's not easy to find an actor like that. "The world gets different opportunities because of the color of their skin, " says the director. " "

He told me that his eyes were full of tears when he read the script. "It's the role I've been longing for. You want to show people that you're talented, but you're always limited by the persona you get. I believe my instincts; the film is, in the final analysis, joyful, a happy ending, and a successful work. "

Initially, the director wasn't sure if Patel was the right man to play Saro. "But he has a strong spirit and I want to see if I can internalize his performance and take it to the next level." He's hungry for the role, and I'm excited to see him in rehearsals, he's worked very hard. "When he got the role, Patel took eight months to learn the Australian accent." Australian accents are the hardest to learn," he said. "It's easy to imitate too much and sound a bit like 'Crocodile Dundee'."



Kidman thought it was great that he could master the accent. "It's really hard," she said. "But he's done it." And in the end he fell in love with American girl Ronnie Mara. "Now people should just think about letting him be the man," Kidman added. "You're not going to look at him with colored eyes anymore, you're not going to label him Indian."

Patel made a deeper impression on the character's childhood memories by watching the shoot in India. His first scene was the moment Saro and his mother were reunited at the end of the film, and Patel shared the joy of the moment with the real villagers: "When they cry, I cry, too," he says. "I know I have more opportunities to show my talent, but I need to wait."

7, picks - Australian stars

When the director saw Sue Blairley's corner, Nicole Kidman jumped into his head. Coincidentally, Kidman had read the script and was eager to see him. "When we met in New York," he said, "she said she understood adoption and what Sue was going through." He told Kidman that the character was ordinary, unfashionable, and not cool. Kidman, on the other hand, thinks the director will elevate it to a new film experience, saying, "He's going to put all his heart and heart into it, he's not going to be cynical, he's not going to be too sentimental, he's a pure person, and he's shining, and that's what this movie needs," she said. "

When Kidman entered the Blairley role, she turned into a suburban housewife, deformed and playing an Australian voice. "It's like being an Australian woman who grew up with me," she says. She has a simple temperament and her accent is very happy. Let me get caught up in it, exist in it, and that's what I love. "



Kidman understands the role this way: "These women are quiet, they don't complain, they don't say anything, they don't over-enthusiastic." They give themselves silently just to preserve the unity and cohesion of their families. "She also understood sue's journey with her adopted son." It's a powerful emotional bondage," she said with tears in her eyes. "Children grow up day by day, you're their mother, and they're leaving you and the way you're raised. But you will still love them unconditionally. I want to hear my mom say, I'll always love you as your backing, and I want to convey my love for my children through movies, through Sue and other mothers. This is the emotional basis for what I want to do. "

"Kidman's story reflects the film's big theme, which is about raising parents with unconditional and infinite love," the director said. As the film progresses, from adoptive mother to birth mother, in terms of thematic structure, the image of the mother-of-two is like supporting the film's two pillars. The symbol of their maternal love is the driving force behind the film. "

8, shooting

Here's an interview with the Lion photographer:

When you were filming the Lion train station scene in Kolkata, you used a very low-tech device, in which the main character boy Saroo sleeps on a train and then loses it, and hears that you're like hiding the camera in a box?

Fraser: (Laughter) When we reached India, we tried very hard to keep in harmony with the locals, but I wasn't Indian at all, and my colleagues weren't like that. When you have a camera on your shoulder, wherever you go, everyone wants to know what we're going to do, staring at my camera. Of course, it's a natural reaction, but when you want to shoot naturally, these are obstacles. At every railway station in India, there are boxes covered in thick linen. The train system is the main artery of Indian commerce, where goods are transported all the time. We made some cover that looked like cardboard boxes, covered with coarse linen and a small curtain at the front. We hid in a safer corner, then climbed up with the camera, a staff member dressed as a train station worker, used a pulley to get the camera out, and then I radioed, "Okay, the plane's right, stop there." "Then we raised the curtain and held out the lens. Some people will see the camera, but not too much. It's a great shot, and if all the passengers see the camera, we can't finish it, and there's a lot of hidden footage in the movie.

We did something similar to shooting Bin Laden, and there was a scene where we followed Jessica Chastain's character through the market to buy vegetables, we didn't do anything to hide, everyone was staring at us, so we had a mechanic walk through three streets, then we sang and danced, and there was a camera pretending to shoot him, and everyone was immediately attracted to our colleagues so that we could get through the market and get the picture we wanted.

To get less space, you use AlexaXT M, which consists of a small operator's station and a lens linked to a stand-alone camera body. I looked at the scene photos, and the staff wore a back panel with the AlexaM body, some V-card batteries, and a Teradeck wireless transmitter.

Fraser: Alexa Mini wasn't on the market at the time, so Alexa XT M was the best choice at the time. This model can be used with a handheld stabilizer and in very small environments and spaces.



Lions photographer Greg Fraser (above, in a camera car) used Alexa XT M mounted on the MoVI to shoot.

For the Lions, you're using Panavision PVintage Primes, which have been owned by UltraSpeeds since the 1970s.

Fraser: Panavision has a lot of cool, old-fashioned clay, and I've been using Ultra Speeds for a long time, and since I was a young photographer, these shots have always been forgotten, and everyone wants new Panavision lenses - it was Primos, but I always liked these old guys. In fact, PVintage is also an Ultra Speed lens, but they are made to be more camera-friendly and AC friendly. They are good machines and I feel good about them.

The scene of the shooting of "The Lion"

Additional information:

Kidman joins Reese Witherspoon in the executive production of Big Little Lies (2017), directed by Jean-Marc Vale, starring Shailene Woodley and Laura Dunn. She also starred in two 2017 films, Colin Farrell's Death of the Holy Deer, directed by Orgers Lansmos, and Sofia Coppola's Civil War women's film The Peony Flower. Kidman also returned to New Zealand to film two episodes of Top of the Lake with old friend Jane Campion.

Patel, who joined the Mumbai Hotel after playing an Indian mathematical wonder in "The Unknown Man," has a wonderful rival play with Amy Hammo, based on a real-life film about the November 2008 attack on the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, India, by Pakistani terrorists that killed more than 160 people.

Director Davis has just finished filming "Maria of The Magella," an excerle from the Biblical story starring Ronnie Mara, Jacquin Phoenix as Judas and Chewat Edgarford as Peter, which will be released in the UK in November. In addition, Davis and David Mickeyo are working on a miniseries adaptation of Joseph Heller's satirical black comedy "Military Rules 22", set at a U.S. air base off the coast of Italy in 1945.

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