The 88th Academy Awards will hand out 24 Oscar statuettes for excellence in cinematic achievements, out of which only four deal with people in front of the camera, those are the actors. The rest will honour the people who work behind the camera, and those are the film craftsmen. The most essential aspects of filmmaking are: screenwriting, cinematography, editing and music. The person responsible to oversee all of this is the director whose main goal is to ‘manipulate’ the audience.
The first (and the cheapest) step is writing an original screenplay. The most mesmerising story of the year was Ex Machina. Inside Out was a work of genius and should be studied by psychologists. But Spotlight showed us that a screenplay can be a work of journalism unto itself and can change the world.
Next comes principal photography. The goal is to tell a story visually. Here’s an example from Sicario - we see soldiers in silhouette, against a pale-blue sky, slowly sinking towards a fire-red horizon, and then disappearing at the bottom of the frame, into total darkness; thus, creating a visual metaphor for the drift from hopelessness towards hatred and eventually violence.
It’s quite impossible to evaluate film-editing, since at its best editing is invisible. The power of Mad Max’s great action sequences were created by the magic of seamless editing. However, sometimes we get a flamboyant film like Big Short that deliberately draws attention to itself and makes the audience a part of it.
Soundtracks contain four types of music: theme and action, place and character. The purpose of film-music is to enhance the scene. Half the success of Star Wars is due to composer John Williams who is a genius in inventing memorable themes and then clothing them with perfect orchestration. However, this year’s guilty pleasure is Ennio Morricone’s unabashedly glittering music of The Hateful Eight.
The most powerful song-moments of the year, for me, were two older songs - Abba’s “Waterloo” (The Martian) and Maccabees’ “We Grew Up in Midnight” (Steve Jobs). But the category is only for Best Original Song, and Sam Smith’s “Writing’s on the Wall” (Spectre) is destined to win the Oscar.
The three signs of a master director are: clarity in articulation of ideas, originality in storytelling, and control in filmmaking logistics. In terms of the magnitude of the logistics of filmmaking, no one can equal George Miller. But in terms of originality of storytelling and articulation of ideas, Alejandro Iñárritu is the more deserving one.
Here’s my ranking of all the work of the essential film technicians in comparison with the other nominees of their category.
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
5. Straight Outta Compton (J. Herman, Andrea Berloff, S. L. Savidge, and Alan Wenkus) 4. Ex Machina (Alex Garland) 3. Bridge of Spies (Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen) 2. Inside Out (Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, and Ronnie del Carmen) 1. Spotlight (Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer)
CINEMATOGRAPHY
5. Carol (Ed Lachman) 4. The Hateful Eight (Robert Richardson) 3. Mad Max: Fury Road (John Seale) 2. Sicario (Roger Deakins) 1. The Revenant (Emmanuel Lubezki)
FILM EDITING
5. Spotlight (Tom McArdle) 4. The Revenant (Stephen Mirrione) 3. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey) 2. Mad Max: Fury Road (Margaret Sixel) 1. The Big Short (Hank Corwin)
ORIGINAL SCORE
5. Carol (Carter Burwell) 4. Bridge of Spies (Thomas Newman) 3. Sicario (Jóhann Jóhannsson) 2. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (John Williams) 1. The Hateful Eight (Ennio Morricone)
DIRECTOR 5. Room (Lenny Abrahamson) 4. The Big Short (Adam McKay) 3. Spotlight (Tom McCarthy) 2. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller) 1. The Revenant (Alejandro G. Iñárritu)
