All language subtitles for MasterClass Ron Howard Teaches Directing - 112 - Case Study Frost Nixon

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Frost Nixon is a very interesting case

study in terms of production design we

didn't have a lot of money we were

shooting it like an independent yet it

took place in 1977 we were shooting in

Los Angeles that's where most of the

movie took place $600,000 that's a

fortune 200 on signature don't worry

about the money Michael corn BL who was

the production designer uh on Apollo 13

and How the Grinch Stole christas and

Ransom and some other projects that I

did he a great collaborator and

experienced he was excited about the

fact that there were going to be some

limitations but it turned out there were

a lot of very very important pivotal

decisions to be made one of them had to

do with how we were going to present the

70s we started looking at the research

photos and it was surprising to us they

were making us laugh because the colors

were so bright the oranges were so vivid

this is what people were wearing and

this is the way they were decorating

hotels and lobbies and at first I

thought that was hilarious and we should

just do it and Michael was the first one

to say you know there's an undercurrent

of tragedy and importance and pressure

on this story and I'm I'm worried we're

going to be smiling too much about the

goofy 7s background and of course we

have to evoke it but I think we have to

be careful about

it he was right and we toned down the

pallet it's still very evocative of the

period sure but we just didn't play into

the joke of how different our

sensibilities are today from what they

were in the in the 70s that was one of

the early tonal decisions about the way

that movie would look that also

influenced my sense of of the comedy in

the movie and there is a lot of humor

but I I thought Michael was right and I

decided not to play on' 7s humor not to

let the haird be too crazy or the mini

skirts Too Short um and um uh and that

was a very important contribution on his

part then there was another we were

working on a small sound stages in Los

Angeles where independent films get made

not the big Hollywood Sound stages

and we're on a tight

schedule but we were going to need to

build some sets because we had some some

scenes with a tremendous amount of page

count and that means lots and lots of

pages and different scenes being shot

and sometimes it's more efficient

because you can shoot so much faster on

a stage that's built than you can in a

practical location so we decided it was

coste effective to build some sets

there's a very important powerful phone

call scene between Richard ni in the

middle of the night in his house in

Orange County um in s Clemente and David

Frost um from his hotel suite where he's

doing research it's this seven or eight

page sequence which means it's 6 7 8

minutes long as a

scene it's in the

play it's

powerful um kind of a turning point

thematically in a lot of ways reveals a

tremendous

amount um in terms of both

characters I'll have

um a

cheeseburger that sounds

good I used to love

cheeseburgers but Dr lram made me give

them up and switched me to cottage

cheese and pineapple

instead he calls them my Hawaiian

Burgers but they don't taste like

burgers at all it tastes like stof and I

went to Michael cornbleth the production

designer and I said you know I would

like to shoot both sides of this phone

call at once I don't want either actor

to ever feel like they're off camera I I

I want them to be acting and performing

with each other 100% all of the time I

want to be able to put two cameras on

one one set and two cameras on the other

set and let these guys do what they did

night after night which is just play the

hell out of the

scene well that meant that he had to

build both the San Clemente

house and the hotel suite that Frost was

living in and preparing for the

interviews in you know in close

proximity and it was a tremendous

exercise in professionalism to make that

work so that we could still light from

the outside um it influenced the kind of

stage that we had to find and it even

influenced uh the way in which the sets

were redesigned and built so that they

would look like they had the scope the

scope and scale of the real San Clemente

house but they could fit on this stage

so there was a bit of Illusion in all of

it in order to facilitate this big goal

I had which was for these two actors to

play this scene out as they had on stage

night after night for a year and and

Michael he he he made it happen and

those were not the only scenes we did in

those sets we shot a lot uh in in both

of those uh in both of those sets and it

was a tremendous day I'll never forget

it four cameras we wound up doing um you

know that scene in in a little less than

a day and it had been previously

scheduled for a day

each uh and so it was tremendously

efficient for for our Indie mind Ed a

movie production it was great for the

actors and and I know that all of that

was made possible because of um

Michael's um you know his

professionalism and his willingness to

compromise a little bit on his end to

help the director you know get uh get

what he was looking for and shoot in the

way that he wanted to

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shoot the style of frost Nixon in my

mind needed to work in opposition to

what it had begun as which was a

play and so I I wanted to shoot it in a

way that was um you know much

more a you know a kind of a behind the

scenes look at what the frost Nickson

interviews might have might have been

like I wanted to just give a little bit

of that flavor um and uh and I also

didn't want

um Michael Sheen and Frank langela to be

forced into a lot of rehearsals they'

done the play so many times and and sure

there were some rewrites and some

changes but certainly in their scenes I

I really didn't want them um you know

falling back on their their theater

performances which you know as soon as

they'd become a little bit more tired

you'd get that so I wanted as much

freshness as possible

also Michael Sheen and Frank Lela fell

into a pattern while doing the the play

where they didn't talk to each other off

stage they only dealt with each other in

character that in their sort of

adversarial roles you know and they

liked each other perfectly well but they

just found that as

actors the the less they communicated

out of character the more focused and

interesting and specific and effective

the performances were on stage and when

I heard about that um I decided to

embrace it and I really kept them away

from one another we had a two-e

rehearsal period but I never rehearsed

their scenes together ever I would talk

through those scenes with each of them

separately and I would rehearse their

scenes and sometimes even stage them and

choreograph them uh with the their you

know the other key characters but I kept

them away from one another look when

you're in office you got to do a lot of

things sometimes that are not always in

the strictest sense of the law legal but

you do them because they're in the

greater interests of the nation right

wait just so I understand correctly are

you really saying that in certain

situations the president can decide

whether it's in the best interests of

the nation and then do something illegal

I'm saying that when the president does

it that means it's not illegal I think

it brought an energy and a sense of

Discovery and and also a you know a

Feeling Again that we were we were sort

of witnessing something uh unfold not

seeing you know a presented story which

is uh the experience you have when you

see a

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play with frost Nixon you know I chose a

very naturalistic style and during the

course of making that movie I almost

never

rehearsed uh we

set up a couple of cameras put them in a

position and basically walked the actors

in and started

shooting very rarely rehearsed we didn't

really plan the shots I let the camera

operators sort of uh have a documentary

experience for the first take or two and

they they would the operators would

discover um you know interesting pans

rack focuses uh you know um look

sometimes they'd wind up photographing

each other

but uh they were both very Savvy and uh

and you know they got a lot of

interesting found moments but I also had

goals um staging goals editorial goals

certain sections through my notation you

know were were sort of meant to be two

or three lines playing together I knew I

wanted that kind of connection I wanted

a pan camera pan uh you know from one

character to the other

and when it didn't happen naturally

during the course of that the shooting

with a scene like the one we we worked

with today or many other uh key scenes

in Frost

Nixon then I would begin to orchestrate

it a little bit and as the as the day

would go along as the scene would unfold

I'd become more and more specific about

what I wanted to go for with the camera

to make sure that I was completing um

you know that foundational set of ideas

that I thought we needed uh to you know

to make the scene um you know come come

together in a powerful way and if it but

if it happened in a spontaneous way I

got very excited about that and I I

would note that on my shot list and um

uh you know and and at the end of the

day a lot of it was about making sure

that I had at least two good looks at

every moment or line of dialogue in a

scene and then I trusted that we could

take that to the editing room and build

it that's the first time I ever worked

that way more often it's it's you know

it's it's carefully thought out um and

refined on the day discovered on the day

and that's very very exciting but it's

also um you know a a little more of a

choreographed uh relationship between

the actors the camera and you the

objectives of the scene

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it's interesting that we were talking

earlier about Cinderella Man and

breaking down the the approach that I

that I took with u those fights because

I wanted the different boxing matches to

be presented in a slightly different way

stylistically to reflect something as

they relate to the character I had done

a similar thing with the fires in

Backdraft where each was designed to

represent uh you know a different kind

of visceral um relationship with the

fire the fear the

heroism uh and um when I saw Frost Nixon

the

play I knew I I wanted to make it as a

movie I I kept feeling that I just

wanted to jump up on stage you know with

a steady Cam and start applying camera

movement and lens choices and edit

torial possibilities to these incredible

scenes that Peter Morgan had written you

know that were inspired by and sometimes

directly taken from the transcripts the

play was had had an intensity and a

humor and I thought the combination of

that along with of course the truth of

the of the story and the Insight on a

kind of sociopolitical level you know I

just thought it was so entertaining and

and fresh and could be very very

cinematic so Peter Morgan always talked

about it as though it was a boxing match

um and Salvatore Totino and I had Fairly

recently made Cinderella Man only a few

years before and we talked a lot about

the interview scenes and I once again

decided that I wanted as much as I could

to differentiate the

scenes um I wanted some scenes to remind

us that it was a television show to use

the cameras a lot in the foreground or

in the background to to give you the

feeling that this was just one big giant

TV show that was that was being put on

and uh and and they were sort of reduced

to being kind of characters in a program

and and then I wanted some moments to

feel very much like it was almost a it a

boxing match it was it was combative in

that way in those instances we would

forget about the cameras and we'd be in

with them but we'd use camera moves and

pans and jump cuts and similar ideas

that we'd learn to use in Cinderella Man

to try to give this verbal combat the

same kind of visceral uh intensity and I

found that it it really worked sometimes

I played

scenes intentionally at a kind of a

distance no singles and close-ups

profiles over the shoulders they were

feeling each other out they weren't

really connecting I didn't I didn't want

you to feel that anybody had landed any

real body blows um there there's another

scene where uh you know Richard Nixon is

basically you know just just destroying

uh Frost uh whatever Frost tries Nixon

is just deflecting it and you know so I

tried to use camera movement again there

sort of moving in and pivoting with

frost back to Nixon and it's you know

it's Nixon who is controlling the tempo

of this conflict and uh so that idea of

the sort of boxing U metaphor was

something that that Salvatore and I and

the editors again Dan Hanley and Mike

Hill again they were nominated uh you

know tried to u to build upon and it was

uh it was it was very interesting by the

last and most important

scene um it was it was simple it was all

about close-ups it was all about the

eyes it was um you know these amazing

performances that these two actors had

been honing for a year on stage but

presented in their most subtle and

intimate um ways a performance level

that was um you know that was uh um you

know entirely about you know their

innermost feelings at that point for

frost it was a moment of validation and

there were a couple of shots where

Michael Sheen played it beautifully but

I tried to help just a little bit with

the camera by just shifting the camera

angle for a moment out of the the the

the the sort of the axis that we were on

the sort of the his ey line to frost

Frost's eyeline to Nixon and just sort

of say this is a oh this is a this is a

different moment and so I went for a

little higher angle and looked down on

them a little bit and it was almost like

a you know a separate discreet um a

moment of Revelation that he was he was

actually going to win this moment he was

going to win this interview so I'm very

very proud of the way the choreography

and the camera work given the fact that

there was no staging there were you know

two men and chairs facing each other uh

and yet we found ways to make it um I

think subtly cinematic and evocative of

what was going on scene to scene in in

in sort of different emotional ways

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I

relearned the the power of the

performance and I was really glad that I

made Frost Nixon at a point in my career

where I had more

confidence um in terms of um the the

cinema of the movie that the that

potential I think earlier in my life I

would have I would have said settled in

on the actors too often for too long and

instead of saving those moments uh for

the their most um their most powerful um

opportunities in terms of just settling

in and concentrating on these actors but

I

relearned that uh there's there's there

is no

more uh

powerful conveyor of uh emotion humor

um um you know suspense than than what

great

actors uh performing great dialogue can

can give uh a director I I

also uh um Frost Nixon was a studio

movie it was financed by Universal but

um the the agreement was that it it was

going to be it was going to be financed

planned and shot like like an indie and

um it it was the the fastest schedule

that I had dealt with in my feature film

um career and I I was terrified going in

and ultimately I was energized by it and

I realized that I've you know I've

learned so much over the years um that

um through the planning through the

preparation uh it actually leaves me in

a position to be able to to move quicker

and there's something energizing about

that and it's certainly worked for frost

Nixon so it was a kind of a confidence

builder for me uh and uh and it was also

just a you know a a reminder that those

things that you sometimes fear actually

can wind up being uh you know the forces

that push you to you know another

perhaps higher creative plane