lance acord on where the wild things are
(an interview I did a couple of weeks ago for www.shots.net)
5 August 2009
shots runs wild with the Hollywood DP and Park Pictures director Lance Acord
“And now,” cried Max, “let the wild rumpus start!”
After years of delay and rumour, Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s 1963 classic storybook Where The Wild Things Are is finally ready to hit the big screen. Wearing his cinematographer hat, Lance Acord was part of the team who spent the best part of 2006 bringing Sendak’s ten sentence story to life.
Originally due to be released by Universal in the early noughties, director Jonze took the project to Warner Bros and by 2008 gossip-pedlars were spuriously claiming that the whole film was to be re-shot.
And the end product of this long and arduous process looks set to be a finely crafted piece of fantasy; dreamlike, raw and shamanistic. The trailer that leaked online earlier in the year revealed the naturally lit beasts – evocative of a nature documentary and 80s fantasy film in equal measure.
According to Acord, the main inspiration for this distinctive look – which runs counter to the elaborate CGI slickness that overpowers most kids’ films these days – was the humble wildlife documentary. This involved using natural light wherever possible, handheld cameras and low coverage – fewer cameras and plenty of wide shots and group shots. The stunning south Australian countryside provided the suitably wild backdrop but where the nature documentarian cares only about getting the all-important shot of a rare animal, Acord also had things like continuity, plot and dialogue to consider.
“When you take a wildlife documentary as an example, it’s really made up of moments; a moment when a creature comes out of the woods to drink water from a stream; a moment when two creatures are playing or fighting. All you really need to do is put the camera on it for that instant, you’re not having to deal with the larger challenges of continuity or the screen time it takes to shoot an entire scene. We always wanted to be open to the lighting possibilities and the weather that the day afforded – it could be rain it could be wind. All these different things that you encounter we wanted to incorporate into the film, in keeping with our approach.”
One particular influence was Werner Herzog’s film Grizzly Man, which played out the relationship between man and beast as well as giving Acord a few ideas about more technical aspects such as lensing.
But when you’re working from a source material as beautifully illustrated and emotionally resonant as Where The Wild Things Are, finding inspiration isn’t too difficult. Like many Americans, Acord’s relationship with the book is a profound one that goes back to his childhood.
“I grew up with that book. Where The Wild Things Are and In The Night Kitchen [another Maurice Sendak picture book, this time about a naked boy who gets baked into a cake] were really important to me, the illustrative style of both those books was an integral part of growing up for me, ” he explains. “My parents were quite young, it was the early 70s, and in the US there was that kind of hippy culture. Younger families really embraced the work of Sendak because it always had that slightly trippy quality to it and the structure of the stories was quite open ended.”
And Acord says that this open-ended structure and dreamlike quality has been respected by Jonze and his writing partner Dave Eggers, who have resisted the temptation to pin down the free floating narrative with tacky, tacked-on plot tricks. “They were very respectful to the intelligence of the kids who would see this film and trust that they would find something in it that they would connect with without having to include devices like a treasure chest and all that crap. It’s playing up to your audience rather than playing down to it.”
Elsewhere in the film, Jonze and the team have shown faith in their young audiences by electing to forego de riguer CG characters in favour of large, hairy puppets and bodysuits. “Younger audiences really respond to the tactile element of the puppets. There’s something really special about them that CG characters can never really quite capture,” says Acord.
Max Records, who plays the main character Max, was an untrained non-actor, spotted by Jonze in Portland and having the gigantic Wild Things on set to jump on, play with and climb over meant that Records’ reactions and interactions would be as real and believable as possible.
The body suits and animatronics used to create the beasts were built by The Jim Henson Company – a driving force behind the 1980s puppet-heavy fantasy films such as Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. “These films were definitely something Spike grew up with but I don’t think there was any film in particular that would be a reference for the film. I think if anything he wanted to reinvent the way you could work with live action puppets, do it in a way that hadn’t been done before.”
Forrest Whitaker and James Gandolfini were among the cast voicing the Wild Things. Their performances were filmed – complete with blocking and props – and Jonze and editor Eric Zumbrunnen cut the tapes together to create a skeleton edit of the film. The Australian actors inside the suits were then given the tapes to study, to improve the nuances of their performances.
And the giant creatures weren’t the only wild things on-set. Given the length of the eight month shoot, many members of the crew (including Acord) moved their families down to southern Australia for the duration. The children all attended a local Australian school and in the afternoons, they were encouraged to hang out around the set. “Max was the same age as a lot of our kids, and he got breaks on set to play with them. With all the different things going on on-set it’s a lot of fun for kids. It was really good for Max. If we were having a hard time getting a scene – and it’s really tough for a kid to deliver these performances day in, day out – you could tell he jest needed a break. He could just go and run wild with the rest of the kids.”
Since moving back to the States, Acord has been working mainly on directing commercials, although he is currently developing his own feature projects through Park Pictures. Acord is one of those fortunate few who can move easily between commercials and feature films and he reckons that working in commercials gives him the freedom to work on none but the most creatively fulfilling movies. In the past he has been cinematographer on films like Lost In Translation and Adaptation. “I would much rather do commercials than do a really commercial film.”
Where The Wild Things Are is set to premier on October 16, 2009
For more information and background on the film, check out the official production blog <A TARGET=”NEW” HREF=”http://www.weloveyouso.com”>www.weloveyouso.com
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“And now,” cried Max, “let the wild rumpus start!”
After years of delay and rumour, Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s 1963 classic storybook Where The Wild Things Are is finally ready to hit the big screen. Wearing his cinematographer hat, Lance Acord was part of the team who spent the best part of 2006 bringing Sendak’s ten sentence story to life.
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