Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1097515
54 DGA QUARTERLY O N A H H I L L M I G H T H AV E described it as "the most unhygienic sce- nario I've ever been in," and Leonardo DiCaprio called it "insane." But to the di- rectors who've worked with 1st AD Adam Somner—including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott—the famously over-the-top inflight coke- and-booze fueled orgy scene from Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street is just another example of Somner's unflappable professionalism. "It was all in the preparation," says Somner of a scene that took eight hours to shoot and involved organizing writhing male and female background players on an enclosed airplane set. First, he split the extras into pairs, had them practice pre-choreographed moves, then reviewed with each couple what they'd be simulating and where. "It would be like, 'You two are doing this over here,' and 'You two are do- ing that over there,' and then sometimes I'd be with Marty and he'd be like, 'Can you have something going on over there?' We were working in a secure environment that was preset," says Somner. "Everyone was prepped. So when we wanted them to go nuts, they could go nuts. Everyone was working in set boundaries." To Somner's thinking, he was just scaling down the same technique he picked up as 2nd AD on Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning epic Gladiator. On day one, Scott filmed the opening battle of Germania. "There were hundreds of people charging around," says Somner. "Chaos. No one knew where they were going." Then Somner watched how Scott's longtime 1st, Ter- ry Needham, restored order. "We had this system," says Somner, adding that later in the shoot the same method would be used when a replica of an ancient arena was built in the Ksar of Ait-Ben-Haddou in Morocco and filled with 4,500 roaring, toga-wearing extras. "We'd try to make it as simple as possible by moving [big] groups together as teams. We'd have team leaders, we gave them letters and numbers: an A group, a B group. It was almost a military thing." That Somner loves bringing stability to a set about to spin out of control is something of an understatement. "It's food and drink to him," says Paul Thomas Anderson, who first brought on Somner as 1st AD on There Will Be Blood. "For me, I really underestimated the scale of that film in terms of the extras, the stunts and what was required. But for Adam, in terms of what he'd J When it comes to rallying the troops and asserting a sense of order even amidst chaos, 1st AD Adam Somner has repeatedly inspired confidence among some of the industry's most revered filmmakers The Art of the 1st AD Adam Somner, above, and opposite (in light-blue shirt) on the set of Ready Player One, has worked with Steven Spielberg on 10 movies.