At the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, Judas and the Black Messiah, which focuses on the history of the Black Panther Party in the United States in the sixties, can be said to be one of the most talked about new works. This film strives to restore historical reality from the scenes, performances and plots, and presents the entanglement of the two key figures of the Black Panther Party in the film. Zunzheng Monitor has the honor of helping this rare biographical masterpiece.
But after watching this film, in fact, the audience may not be able to perceive a small truth at the production level: this film was actually filmed under the premise of limited resources. In response, director Shaka King and Oscar-nominated cinematographer Sean Bobbitt teamed up to share their efforts to rediscover the 1960s Chicago in Cleveland.
For many years, director Shaka King has been working on the development, screenwriting and filming of the film. Being able to work with Oscar-nominated cinematographer Bradford Young has been a "reassuring pill" in his work. However, this arrangement ultimately failed to materialize. cause? Helpless schedule conflict.
How is this last problem solved? King's agent told him that Sean Poppet loved the script. "I've never met Sean," King said, "but I know [his] work." Twelve Years of Slavery is one of the best movies ever made. ”
"I showed Sean about 200 photographs taken on Chicago's West End between 1967 and 1973," King said. Bobbitt said that if you look at the photos, you know how the story should be told.
In terms of color, these photographs became the "Bible" referenced in the film. The creators tried to replicate the kodak color film feel of the old photos. Bobbitt said: "The deep black and the bright main colors, which fade slightly over time, can bring a sense of real existence to the image." We hope that through the film, you can also immerse yourself in that era, but we don't want to blindly make a documentary style. We wanted to bring the viewer into a complete world that echoed the tones of the late 1960s. We started with this as a starting point to create the style of the film. ”
King added: "Another amazing source of color in the film is the different ranges of brown skin, and that's exactly what Sean wants to highlight. In fact, with large format cameras, we don't need to use a lot of light because the cameras can collect all the information. It will set off the protagonist's black skin. ”
Regarding the limited resources for the film's production, King said that they wanted to shoot on Chicago's West End, but did not have enough money. Most of the film's footage was shot in Cleveland, and a lot of the colors come from Sam Lysenko's stunning work and beautiful scenes.
Bobbitt said: "As part of the style-making process, I took a lot of pictures on the spot. Then I worked on them in advance at Lightroom, making different color gradings and styles, so when shaka and I looked at different scenes, I could call up the photos and get references. "These photographs not only show the general situation of the shooting location, but also a rough color reference. The director can look at them and say, "Oh, I like this, I don't like that, a little more of this, a little bit more of that." Then the team slowly began to design the style of the film based on the actual shooting location.
Shaka King said the film should present the audience with the feeling of an epic movie, but they didn't have the money to shoot a lot of locations, so accordingly, the interior scenes had to be rich in dynamics. Sean helped a lot with that.
Director Shaka King checks the shooting effect through the Zunzheng monitor
Also playing an important role in the filming of the film was the zunzheng monitor with first-class monitoring performance: on set, director Shaka King viewed the wonderful performances of the film's main actors Daniel Kalua and Lekes Steinfeld through the zunzheng monitor, and felt the first-hand shooting effect. The two lead actors continued their previous wonderful collaboration in "Breaking Bad" to this film, and Daniel Kalua won the Golden Globe Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor for this film.
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