Best Picture Oscar Nominees: Behind the Scenes of ‘Anora,’ ‘Conclave’ and More

“Hi, I’m Sean Baker. I’m the writer, director and editor of “Anora.” This is the scene in which our protagonist, Ani, played by Mikey Madison, is arriving at the house supposedly owned by Ivan Zakharov, who is played by Mark Eydelshteyn. So this was obviously supposed to bring not only Ani into Ivan’s world, but the audience into Ivan’s world. So I wanted the camera to essentially be following Ani, but also be seeing the world through Ani’s eyes. That’s why I did my best to not make it very cutty, especially when she arrives up at the front door and comes into the house. That is a one shot. “So welcome to my humble aboard. Hugs! Because I really wanted the audience to be walking through this space with Ani and seeing the space for the first time with Ani. So when she turns and looks to the right, the camera is turning and looking to the right. When she looks to the left, the camera’s turning and looking to the left. And what it does is that it really sets up the geography because the geography is going to be extremely important later on in the film, especially in the home invasion scene. So Drew Daniels, my amazing cinematographer who I’ve worked with now twice, he is a master at handheld camera operation, so he’s the one who’s actually holding the camera and shooting this entire sequence. “Not too shabby!” “What is ‘shabby’?” “Oh, I’m just playing.” Drew’s handheld cinematography is about as steady as handheld can get, especially with a heavy camera like this. And then he lands in this beautiful two shot. For me as an editor, that gave me a really solid out to cut to our wide static shot. “Oh, sorry, I’m waiting for you.” This was my wonderful actors adding a little bit of improv there, where Mark runs up the stairs. And then the next shot where they’re coming into the bedroom. This shot will be repeated at the end of the film. So in many ways it’s bookending her experience at this mansion. “Nice view.” “My view is better.”

My name is Brady Corbet and I am the co-writer and director of “The Brutalist. For the cantilevered floors, we plan to use upside down T-shaped beams integrated into concrete slabs down here. This is a sequence in which Adrien Brody’s character, Laszlo Toth, defends his project to a group of local community advocates and financiers who have brought in a local architect to evaluate his plans for the project. We shot this sequence on the outskirts of Budapest in a granite quarry, because we couldn’t afford to build a set, frankly. I mean, we had big ideas about what this location could be and simply just to dig a hole in the ground that is this significant is quite expensive thing to do. So this quarry was perfect in terms of the scope and scale, and we dirtied it and muddied it to make it into a set where these characters are able to have a 3-minute conversation because there’s one edit in the sequence, but it’s all the same shot. The one cut to this overhead in the middle of the sequence was actually just for the sake of orienting viewers. But the scene is one shot and it’s one take, which is usually how I shoot everything. The reason that we shoot everything in one take is not just for formal reasons, but it’s also just for scheduling reasons. “Laszlo has offered to personally offset these costs.” “No, I’m sorry, but you have asked me to come here to tell you what it is that we do not need. Plain and simple. The one thing we do not need is this guy.” It is much easier to set up a shot and do one thing over and over again and do it well, than shooting coverage like you would on most television shows of every single performer. Philosophically, you’re only cutting if there’s a reason to cut. Otherwise, it feels like what it often is, which is just a Band-Aid on a project where you’re just mopping everything up. “Everything that is ugly, cruel, stupid, but most importantly, ugly, everything ... is your fault.” And so, for me, I think that sunlight-in-a-box feeling that you have, that you’ve captured this ephemeral thing. It only occurs in sequence takes. And it’s because viewers, we all know enough about the process that if you start cutting around, it somehow feels inauthentic. “He hit me.” “I trust you.” So I think that there is really something to be said for doing everything inside of one frame.

Hi, This is James Mangold. I’m the co-writer, director, and one of the producers of “A Complete Unknown.” “Mr. Pete Seeger.” This is Gerde’s Folk City, an early scene in the film. Joan Baez has just done a show-stopping tune, and Pete Seeger comes onstage, played by the brilliant Edward Norton, and introduces his protégé, a very young 19-year-old Bob Dylan, who we’ve only heard sing one other time in the film so far, and is coming onstage for his debut. Timothée Chalamet, of course, plays Bob Dylan, and will be playing live in this scene, as he does throughout. We also introduce Dan Fogler playing Albert Grossman in the audience. He will become a sideman and forever presence in this period of Bob’s life. All right. Thanks, folks. Yeah Thanks, Pete. That’s a ... Boy, that’s a lot to live up to. Monica Barbaro is Joan Baez, a kind of very fierce presence in the folk scene and a huge star at that moment in folk music. “How about that Joan Baez, folks? It’s pretty good. And she’s pretty. Sings pretty. Maybe a little too pretty.” I love this moment of Timothy kind of portraying Bob’s slightly foot-in-mouth, inappropriate, provocative nature. “I was young when I left home. I’d been out ramblin’ round. And I never wrote a letter to my home. To my home.” This is an early song of Dylan’s called “I Was Young When I Left Home” that I felt was apropos, mainly because it’s so profoundly autobiographical in the sense that Dylan was young when he left home and restarted his life in New York. “I was bringing home my pay. And I met an old friend I used to know ... ” It’s interesting telling the story of this period. I felt that much of Dylan’s filmography, although it’s mostly documentary, is very handheld, very kind of vibrant, with electric in the sense of chasing the actors around in a documentary style. I felt that Bob’s style itself was so profound that I wanted to lay back and just observe and allow the power of the music, which we perform throughout the movie live. Let that music communicate. “It’s very good, isn’t it?” “Yeah.” “He’s my client.” Folk music is, of course, at its core, simple, unadorned, a human voice and a guitar. And for that reason, I felt that we really couldn’t risk producing these pieces with too much technological intervention. I wanted to just let the actors move from speaking to singing and back to speaking again in a way that feels utterly natural and like you’re there.

“Hi, My name is Edward Berger and I’m the director of the movie “Conclave.” So we’re about 30 minutes into the movie. We’ve set up the place as the Vatican and the Pope has died. And now Cardinal Lawrence, the character played by Ralph Fiennes, is the Dean of the College of Cardinals, meaning he has to organize the coming election of the new pope. And now it’s his big day because it’s the first day of the conclave, meaning all the doors are being shut. The cardinals are going away into the Sistine Chapel to vote for this next pope. And Ralph Fiennes gives the introductory speech, a homily. And we chose this piece of music at the very beginning. It’s actually the only music that isn’t composed. Everything else is composed in the movie. So it’s the only kind of source music sung by a choir. And it is the only piece of music that is played in the Sistine Chapel for hundreds of years. And I found this fact on a 6:00 AM morning tour. We went to the Sistine Chapel on a guided tour with and it was empty. It’s the only time that it’s empty. If you go at 6:00 AM and the guide told us that this was the piece of music. So I looked it up and found it and found it immensely moving and beautiful. So I decided to put it into the movie. So Ralph starts out the speech in Italian, and Ralph spent a long time practicing Italian, and he was actually very, very adamant. We always had a dialogue coach or someone like an Italian woman there who listened to his diction and everything. She was very satisfied of how he performed it because also he was super meticulous that it felt believable that he’s lived there for 25 years and has practiced Italian for 25 years. So we paid a lot of attention to that. But then at some point, something comes over him, a feeling. And he stops. And then he switches into his natural language, which is English. “But you know all that.” “Let me speak from the heart for a moment.” And delivers a speech about really his true feelings, and that is doubt. He expresses his doubt about his own faith, about his own purpose in the church, about the Church in general, about what he thinks the next pope should be like, someone who accepts doubt and gives in to doubt. And that intuitive speech, that giving into it raises a lot of eyebrows. In this scene, you will notice, we’re usually fairly wide on Ralph in the beginning when he speaks Italian. We’re from behind. We’re from a profile. And then as soon as he speaks from the heart, as soon as his speech changes, we go in for a close up, a very frontal central close up, and the camera starts moving. And then it’s actually just one shot. “Certainty is the great enemy of unity.” “Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.” It’s just one shot, uninterrupted small push in on Ralph as he speaks and he loses himself within his words and he doesn’t notice anyone around him. And only then, once he’s finished. We cut to the reverse of a wide shot of all the cardinals listening. “If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith.” “Let us pray that God will grant us a pope who doubts.” The scene sets Ralph Fiennes up as a character to be reckoned with. He delivers the speech that comes from his heart and other Cardinals, especially the ones with ambition to become the next pope, suddenly fear that there’s a new contender in the room. And that is the climax of the scene.

“Hello. I’m Denis Villeneuve. I’m the director of ‘Dune, Part Two’.” [TENSE MUSIC] “So this scene happens exactly after the introduction of Feyd-Rautha, where we saw him as a psychopath. And here, we bring this character into his political environment, where it would be a strange celebration of its birthday, where in Harkonnen culture, the prince will have to fight slaves in order to prove himself in front of the audience. And the whole scene has been designed as a dance between Feyd-Rautha, played by the great Austin Butler, and the crowd. Austin created a cross mix between, I will say, an Olympic sword fighter, a serial killer and Mick Jagger. He brought tremendous sex appeal to the part. And Feyd-Rautha being one of the most iconic characters of ‘Dune’, Austin had big shoes to fill. And I’m very proud of what he brought to the screen. One aspect that I love about Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ is all the books is also a study of the impact of the environment on humans. How nature shapes human psyche, behaviors, culture, technology, politics, et cetera. You want to know about the Fremen? You look at the desert. But for the Harkonnen, it’s a bit more tricky because they completely destroyed their natural world. And I was looking for environmental hints, ideas, clues that will give me some hints about who they are exactly. And I thought about, what if their sunlight was subtracting color instead of revealing them? What if they were coming from a black-and-white world? That would give us some idea from where that binary, fascist, cruel behaviors are coming from. As my cinematographer, Greig Fraser, and I were brainstorming together how to bring an alien sunlight that will be black and white to the screen, Greig had the idea to test infrared. And infrared is the light wavelength that is usually blocked into cameras because it’s considered as noise. And we modified the cameras to let only that wavelength come through and block the other colors. And it created that eerie, strange, alien, nightmarish atmosphere I was dreaming of for Giedi Prime.” “Happy birthday, dear nephew.” [CHEERING] “We see almost through skin. The eyes become piercing like insects. And the problem with that technique is that there’s no way to return. We shot it this way. It’s not an effect that was done in post. And so these scenes never appear in colors.” “Why do they not stop the fight?” “Plans within plans.” [DRAMATIC MUSIC] [NON-ENGLISH SINGING]: “Show me who you are.” “Now, all again, this scene is a game between the Baron, who put his nephew, Feyd, under tremendous pressure, so he will be pushed in front of the crowd to prove his valor. And I kept the scene very intimate around Feyd, keeping the crowd in the background just as landscape that will, a bit like the desert for Paul. A pressure that will push on him, and to feel the impact of that pressure in an intimate way. I came up with the design of these picadors, characters that in the book are very frightening. And I came with that kind of devilish shape that seemed to come from one of our nightmares. Again, give us an idea of what is pleasure for Harkonnen, what is sport for them, how cruel or desperately cruel they are. And here’s a moment that I absolutely love, where we feel that Feyd is not afraid of pain. He loves pain. He loves to bleed, to be on the edge between life and death. It’s someone that has only — you respect only one thing, is courage, and good fighters. And the slave who has prove proven his skills gained Feyd’s respect, and that is why he didn’t kill him at first right away. He played with him like a cat and a mouse. It’s a scene that, in some ways, is very close to what was described in the book. And it’s a scene that every time I see it, especially with the insane Hans Zimmer score and the great work of the sound design to bring that crowd to life, I’m very proud of.” “He’s impressive indeed.” [CROWD CHANTING]

Hi, I’m Walter Salles, and I’m the Director of “I’m Still Here.” We are 30 minutes into the film, in the family home at the heart of the story. Eunice Paiva is portrayed by Fernanda Torres and Rubens Paiva by Selton Mello. Everything here conveys a sense of normalcy: the light, the sounds from the beach, the intimacy of the dialogue. But then this harmony is broken by the invasion of the house, by military police. Now hand-held, the camera relays the instability of the situation, pulsing with the characters. Rubens is told that he will be taken for an interrogation. He tries to feign that the situation is under control, but we sense it’s not. For the first time in the film, Eunice’s vulnerability surfaces. It is from here that Eunice’s arc begins to take shape. From this point onward, the entire scene revolves around subtraction. Subtraction of light as the curtains are shut, subtraction of sounds from the outside. Subtraction of music. When one of the couple’s five kids, Nalu, enters the house with a friend, both Eunice and the military officers try to pretend that normalcy still exists, but it no longer does. Nalu, played by Barbara Luz, leads us to the father’s room. It’s a vital scene, the last conversation between a father and his daughter, staged as the real Nalu told me it happened. There’s a strange intimacy in this exchange, underlined by the daughter’s affection and the father’s desire to prolong this moment. And then we understand why the intimacy was illusory. This is an improv created on the spot with actor Luiz Bertazzo He begins to peek into the family’s intimacy. Moments like this breathe life into the sequence. Rubens reappears, preparing to be taken away for questioning. He tries once again to create a sense of ordinariness. Here, the last embrace between Rubens and Eunice is framed by the military officers, emphasizing a sense of suffocation in what was once a safe place, the family house. This is the first of the only two close-ups in the entire film. We saved it for the last glance between Rubens and Eunice. From here on, we are with her. “I’m Still Here” becomes her film.

My name is RaMell Ross. I am the co-writer and director of “Nickel Boys.” “Young man! Young man. Do — Do you know a student named Elwood Curtis?” Hattie, who’s played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, is visiting her grandson, Elwood, who is played by Ethan Herisse at Nickel Academy, in which he’s unjustly sent. She’s running into Turner, who is Elwood’s friend, and Turner is played by Brandon Wilson, and Turner is the camera as the film is shot in point of view, our camera operator in this instance, Sam Ellison, is acting as the eyes of Turner and allowing you to participate in Turner’s reality by kind of seeing with him, seeing alongside him. And so when she comes to give Turner a hug, which she does because she says she can’t hug Elwood, she is essentially coming in close contact with Sam, and Sam is making a camera move that mimics as best as possible where the head would go and where the gaze, the eyes would go in relationship to being in that proximity. And with that process, Hattie is as Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, is unable to have that intimate connection that happens when you have a scene partner. “What is your name?” “It’s Turner, ma’am.” “Oh, Turner. Well, I’m glad I can rely on somebody around here, Turner. When was the last time you had family to come visit you?” “Oh, um, well.” “You know? I came all this way. And I can’t hug Ellwood, so I guess you will have to do. And it’s interesting for Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who has so much experience, to be put into this process in which he has to look and act directly towards and to the lens. “What are they feeding y’all? You can’t muster up a bigger hug than that. You know, I’m going to remember that next time, Turner. Hug me again.” Which means that she has a sense of loneliness and an inability, again, to have that human touch and that eye contact in which actors so much rely on. And so Aunjanue ends up, she says, in hindsight, kind of converting that loneliness and that isolation into the character Hattie, who is feeling very similarly, being out in the middle of this place without her grandson and having no one to turn to. “Thank you so much.” And I think it really pays dividends in the performance.

I’m Coralie Fargeat. I’m the writer, director, one of the editors, and one of the producers of “The Substance.” So we’re here with Elisabeth Sparkle, who is played by Demi Moore, who is the main character of the film. And she has to split the time with her alter ego, Sue, and she just wake up for what’s supposed to be a week. But the other self has taken a bit more time, and then it’s the moment where she realizes that something is wrong in the process. So this is the first transformation of Elisabeth, where she realized that her finger has dramatically aged. And what interested me into that aging was that it was not going to be totally realistic, but that it was going to be more as a deformation and some kind of metamorphosis. That kind of distorts her. And here the idea with all those close-ups that goes more and more macro on the fingers, is to project Elisabeth’s fears and Elisabeth’s thoughts about what’s happening to her. So now we enter a mental space where she projects all of her fear about what’s happening onto the shots. And so here she realized that it’s because the other self, Sue, played by Margaret Qualley, has taken more time and more fluid from her body that it has caused this degeneration. So here she’s calling the service the substance to try and find a way to revert this. And here we have the image of the billboard. That is the first time that the image of her other self is starting to dominate her. Look at her. And the other thing that starts to diminish her is that this voice doesn’t recognize her name. Elisabeth Sparkle, but it’s just when she says her number, “I’m 503,” that she gets an answer. So it’s the first time of almost dehumanization where she becomes smaller, weaker, and also the shot where I shot her from above, where I film her discomfort, the fact that she’s now threatened, and the point of view of the camera that is almost as a face off with her double and above her, as if she was tiny and kind of oppressed by the situation, makes her feel smaller into frame, while the other self kind of takes the lead. So here we see her anger and the fact that she tries to cope with her stress and her anger by just cleaning the apartment, trying to cope with the situation. And again, there is this billboard that is everywhere. There is no way to escape from her. And here again, through the object, through the vacuum cleaner, we see that Elisabeth’s attention has spotted something disturbing. And here we hear the music. The music that is from Sue’s world. The “Pump It Up,” that starts to overwhelm her. And again, she starts to feel smaller and smaller into frame. Meanwhile, Sue becomes bigger and bigger with this hypersexualized body that becomes as a giant, as a giant image that kind of tyrannize you. And that kind of makes you feel so small and so ugly compared to all this flesh, to all this perfection that becomes as an injunction that becomes higher and higher.

Hi, This is Jon M. Chu and I am the director of “Wicked.” “And Elfie. Can I call you Elfie?” “Well, it’s a little bit perky.” So we’re about midpoint in the movie. And these two roommates, who are very different from each other, have moved into this semi-small dorm room. And it’s Glinda and Elphaba, played by Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, and they’ve just bonded over sharing stories with each other. So this is the beginning of their true friendship, their first date, shall I say. This is a very iconic scene. “Popular” is one of those songs that everybody knows from “Wicked.” It’s probably the most used in talent shows, and there was a lot of pressure to do this right and to find our way cinematically into this. But of course, it’s all around Ariana Grande’s performance here of showboating and showing her power to transform Elphaba into someone who could be popular. “Exactly what they need.” And Ari is just a master of comedy. You can see it in all her moves and how she interacts with Cynthia Erivo. When you actually listen to it too, it’s her beats and her pauses are just masterful. Paul Tazewell, our costume designer, designed this beautiful, new word I learned, peignoir, for her that has now become iconic on all the dolls and things, and this giant chandelier that she swings on. It seems simple, but actually there’s a lot of manpower that is running that thing. There’s a guy actually on top who’s spinning it and helping her get around, and this was a lot of play for us. We got to really allow the song to come in and take our time to come in. We had a pianist in the corner because everything is live as well, so that she could use her own tempo. “Popular, you’re going to be popular.” And what the concept was for this was rather than go into a giant closet because it’s a dorm room, that the closet was all the bags that we had seen in previous scenes. I love this moment where she grabs the ruby slippers and taps it three times as our nod to Wizard of Oz. But in each of these devices, even though again, they seem simple, there’s grown men in small spaces pulling it open and shutting it, and the engineering in each took months and months to design right. One of the biggest things that Cynthia really wanted was that she didn’t just want to be a passenger on this, she really wanted to be a part of it. She’s not resisting it as much as in the shown in fact, she’s actually really enjoying this attention and this friendship. “Not when it comes to popular” That mirror alone. It’s so heavy and has so much engineering. It’s actually very, very dangerous. Later she’ll actually step on it. And so that alone took many, many months to design, including this thing that folds back and that she falls back on. And I love this moment where she swans around her. We did this about 18 times. We had to grease up the floor. Her peignoir couldn’t get caught on that hanger. But again, Ari is a master of physical comedy and she does it like she was born to do it. “What?”