{"id":293020,"date":"2021-07-07T18:00:59","date_gmt":"2021-07-07T15:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/directing-appletvs-schmigadoon-film\/"},"modified":"2021-07-07T18:00:59","modified_gmt":"2021-07-07T15:00:59","slug":"directing-appletvs-schmigadoon-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/directing-appletvs-schmigadoon-film\/","title":{"rendered":"#Directing AppleTV+’s Schmigadoon \u2013 \/Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Directing App<\/a>leTV+’s Schmigadoon \u2013 \/Film<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

In the opening minutes of the forthcoming AppleTV+ series<\/a> Schmigadoon!<\/strong><\/em>, New York City residents Melissa (Cecily Strong<\/strong>) and Josh (Keegan-Michael Key<\/strong>) find themselves lost in the woods on a camping trip<\/a>. But just like the protagonists of the 1954 MGM movie\u00a0Brigadoon<\/em>, they suddenly stumble into a mystical town that seems to appear out of nowhere. Melissa and Josh quickly realize that they\u2019re trapped in this town \u2013 one in which the residents break out into elaborate song and dance numbers as if they were characters in classic Hollywood musicals of old. The couple can\u2019t escape until they find true love\u2026so it\u2019s unfortunate that their relationship is on the rocks.<\/p>\n

Veteran filmmaker\u00a0Barry Sonnenfeld<\/strong> (Men in Black<\/em>) directed all six episodes of Schmigadoon!<\/em>, and I had the pleasure of speaking with him about incorporating different visual styles into this series, injecting a sense of reality into heightened scenarios, the surprising fact that he is \u201cnot a musical guy,\u201d and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Schmigadoon!<\/i> is a throwback to Golden Age musicals, but it also has a more modern component with its two lead characters. What sort of visual balance did you need to strike in terms of recreating the look of some of those old classics, while also incorporating a modern touch?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, that was exactly the challenge. [laughs] What we did is, I looked at a lot of musicals. I was not a musical guy, and then having researched musicals, I remembered why I\u2019m not a musical guy. So we brought a lot from those old musicals. We wanted it to feel like it was shot on a stage, even when we were outside. We wanted the background to be very painterly. I wanted to shoot the dance and singing numbers the way the MGM musicals used to shoot them, which is head to toe. I hate the way a lot of modern musicals are shot where people are shot waist and up, or in close up, or inserts of feet. I want to see the full actor dancing. I think the audience knows when it\u2019s the actor or when it\u2019s a double or something. So I took a lot of those rules and used them, and what I bring to things is I like to use very wide-angle lenses, which weren\u2019t used in that era. But there\u2019s a certain energy to wide-angle lenses that I really like. And then Bo Welch<\/b>, the production designer, and I worked really hard along with wardrobe and along with [showrunner] Cinco Paul<\/b>, and it was fun to create that world and make it sort of familiar, yet a little bit more modern.<\/p>\n

I want to go back to something you said earlier, when you were revisiting those musicals and remembered why you aren\u2019t a musical guy. Can you elaborate on that a little?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, I like reality. I like reality in my comedies. I once did a show with Tom Sizemore<\/strong>, and after the first day of shooting, I said, \u201cTom, I\u2019m going to have to fire you,\u201d and he said, \u201cWhy?\u201d And I said, \u201cYou\u2019re trying to be funny.\u201d He said, \u201cIt\u2019s a comedy!\u201d I said, \u201cDon\u2019t be funny, be real. If the situation is funny, you\u2019ll be funny. If the situation is not funny, don\u2019t help it by your stupid acting by being funny.\u201d So the challenge for me with musicals is I\u2019m buying into this reality where suddenly people stop and sing. For me to embrace that reality, which seems a little off to me, I really needed to feel \u2013 and I think Cinco did a great job in creating that through the script \u2013\u00a0that people singing is just part of their reality. What\u2019s great in Schmigadoon<\/i>, people just break out into a song as part of their normal activity. In fact, at one point Cecily\u2019s character says to Aaron<\/strong> [Tveit<\/strong>]\u2019s character, \u201cThat was a great song,\u201d and Aaron says, \u201cWhat song?\u201d They don\u2019t even know they\u2019re singing, you know? So for me, that helped buy into their reality. That singing is part of their reality, and therefore it\u2019s OK. Once I got that, I was able to embrace people singing. And in fact, they were my favorite days. The days when I was shooting singing and dancing numbers were the happiest days for me on the set.<\/p>\n

\"Schmigadoon<\/p>\n

Cool. The production design has this heightened, purposefully fake-looking aesthetic which works really well for this magical setting, but I assume you don\u2019t want viewers to be distracted by that when you\u2019re trying to depict more dramatic scenes. Can you talk about your approach to filming with those heightened backgrounds?<\/b><\/p>\n

Right, that\u2019s a really good question. I think that we set up the world enough so that the audience accepts that world, and they accept it because the acting is not acknowledging that stuff out there. The acting is pure reality. Even when Jane Krakowski<\/strong> is singing and standing up in her MG and steering with her foot, I buy that reality of that world that we created, because in all six episodes it\u2019s the same tone. We don\u2019t suddenly switch tones and you go, \u201cWait, that\u2019s not the four dollars I signed up for. What happened in that episode?\u201d So consistency of tone is all you need for the audience to relax and say, \u201cI will buy your world. Just don\u2019t screw it up by being inconsistent.\u201d<\/p>\n

What were your executive producer duties on this show? Obviously executive producer means a different thing in the world of television than it does in film, and you\u2019re also not the showrunner here, so what did that encompass for you here?<\/b><\/p>\n

Right. Well it encompassed some decisions that normally a director wouldn\u2019t make. Like, it was my decision to shoot in Vancouver, and I convinced Universal and [executive producer] Lorne<\/strong> [Michaels<\/strong>] and Cinco. Cinco was the least willing to leave New York, because he felt only New York had the right amount of dancers and singers that we needed. But we got them all from Canada. A lot of them had worked on Broadway and stuff, but they were all from Vancouver or Toronto. So, it\u2019s everything from budget to casting. It was hard for me because I was the showrunner for three years on A Series of Unfortunate Events<\/i>, which also shot in Vancouver with a lot of the same prop people and producers and line producers and Bo Welch and the same art department. So it was often difficult for me to take a backseat to Cinco, but we got along well and appreciated each other\u2019s strengths.<\/p>\n

So you mentioned you weren\u2019t necessarily a musical guy, but was there a specific type of dance number, or aspect of making a musical, that you were hoping and able to achieve in Schmigadoon<\/i>? Any particular number that stands out to you?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, one number that stands out to me is, one of my favorite three musicals \u2013\u00a0the only three I like at all \u2013 is Pennies From Heaven<\/i>. There\u2019s a scene where Bernadette Peters is teaching her class, and all the kids get up on the desk and tap dance. I love that scene, and Cinco had written a song that took place in the school, so I asked Chris<\/strong> Gattelli<\/strong>, who is the choreographer, if we could put it on those desks. Bo built special desks that could be tap danced on, and we screwed them into the floor so they\u2019d be safe. But I really like that scene, and those kids are really tap dancing. I could not believe we could get twelve or sixteen kids who could do that, and they pulled it off.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Schmigadoon!<\/em> debuts on AppleTV+ on July 16<\/strong>, 2021<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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“#Directing AppleTV+’s Schmigadoon \u2013 \/Film” In the opening minutes of the forthcoming AppleTV+ series Schmigadoon!, New York City residents Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) find themselves lost in the woods on a camping trip. But just like the protagonists of the 1954 MGM movie\u00a0Brigadoon, they suddenly stumble into a mystical town that seems…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":293021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net\/wp\/wp-content\/images\/Barry-Sonnenfeld-interview.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1568,16211,101812,86,1523,1570,10294,19730,94801,1525],"class_list":["post-293020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-featured-stories-sidebar","tag-appletv","tag-barry-sonnenfeld","tag-comedy","tag-drama","tag-features","tag-interviews","tag-musical","tag-schmigadoon","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}