Saturday Night Live’s Alex Buono details how they shot one of my favorite bits this year, the Wes Anderson-ian parody trailer for “The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders.” Good ideas only get you so far:
Wes Anderson is one of the most idiosyncratic filmmakers of our time; his style is so unique that you might think it would be easy to satirize. But here’s the problem: turns out everyone has a different opinion about what MOST distinguishes Wes Anderson’s style. Is it the limited color palette? Flat space camera moves? Symmetrical compositions? Snap-zooms? Twee, hand-crafted art direction? Slow-motion walking shots? Clearly it’s all of those things and more, but within the limited context of a trailer, which are the most important signatures to include? And within a subculture as film-literate as the writers and producers of SNL, we were surrounded by astute Wes Anderson connoisseurs. Suddenly this spot had morphed from something I was dying to shoot into something I was terrified to shoot!
It’s a great example of how an idea that starts with the writing (in this case by John Solomon, Rob Klein, Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider) has to be matched by execution at every step. I always urge screenwriters to read American Cinematographer for how-they-did-it details. Buono’s recap provides a nice snapshot of how challenging it really is, particularly when you’re facing a hard deadline.
If I haven’t adequately expressed how long and complicated this shoot had become, let me headline it: I was on stage at 10am Friday morning with Rhys (director) and Justus McLarty (producer) along with Andrea (art director) to walk through/tweak the sets as they were being painted. The animation unit started their day at 3pm and (somehow) had a finished shot by 3am. Meanwhile our night exterior crew arrived at 2pm, our stage crew arrived at 5pm and we all finally wrapped at 7am. Saturday morning. As in: the day of the show.
The final result is worth it: