Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1400557
wasn't that difficult." Much more challenging, however, was the 'tree house village' sequence, where the explorers are cap- tured by natives and lifted high into the rainforest. "It was shot with the 1st and a 2nd unit, and it was shot over the course of weeks rather than days," he explains. "Not only is the set layered, be- cause you are in a tree house, but the geography, if it's not edited properly, would be super difficult to follow…Some people are running on trees up above. They are swinging on ropes across the river below. And you're getting that piecemeal — a lot of it is shot out of order…It becomes challenging to put together and to make it exciting and also to make it 'action-y'. Geography was super challeng- ing in that particular scene." The 'rapids' sequence was also one of the film's more difficult sections to assemble. "Interestingly, Jaume and myself, for a long period, [were] the only ones who knew what [was] happening," he recalls of the sequence. "We know the big picture...We are imagining what's happen- ing, but then we have to translate all that informa- tion to our postvis people, visual effects people and sound people, especially Jaume, because he has the vision and is leading the way to the other departments so that when it all comes together, it looks like what the audience sees on the screen." T H E S P A R K S B R O T H E R S The Sparks Brothers, from Focus Features and director Edgar Wright, is a documentary that looks at the 50-year career of Sparks, a musical duo made up of brothers Ronald and Russell Mael. Considered rock's original 'odd couple' — Russell the younger, charismatic front man, and Ron, the older, deadpan writer/keyboardist — Sparks has never followed musical trends, and as a result, has influenced countless musicians with their 25 albums. Still, their story isn't well known, even by their biggest fans. This documentary looks to reveal how Sparks became "your favorite band's favorite band". Paul Trewartha edited the feature, which runs two-and-a-half hours and features interviews with musicians that include Beck, 'Weird Al' Yankovic, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, Todd Rundgren, Fred Armisen and Jane Wiedlin, among many others. All share a love of the band, and cite them as a major influence. Ron and Russell also sat down for several interviews that reflect on their history. According to Trewartha, it was his work with Wright and producer Nira Park on behind-the- scenes content over the past decade that led to his involvement on this feature. "We've found a good shorthand and shared aesthetic," he says of their past work. "From the moment I came on-board, we were speaking the same language." Trewartha began cutting the feature back in 2019, coming on-board shortly after finishing work on Ronnie's, a documentary about Ronnie Scott's jazz club. "There was a vast amount of content," he says of The Sparks Brothers. "For all feature doc projects you expect a huge amount of content, and it's problematic if you don't have it. This was pretty exceptional." The 11 interviews with Ron and Russell Mael — who were shot in Los Angeles, New York, London, Mexico and Tokyo — equated to more than 18 hours of footage alone. On top of that, there were interview with 80 musicians, actors and fans — all shot black & white — as well as 50 years worth of archival material. Cinematographer Jake Polonsky captured the new material, shooting in black & white on a Red camera. "They used a system called FileMaker, and had broken out a lot of the archives, and had given it a coded system, so that was all very organized," Trewartha recalls of the footage. "It's just that there is so much of it! The original task is always to make that vast archive accessible so that you have what you want when you need it." The film's introduction begins with Ron and Paul Trewartha cut the Sparks documentary, which spans 50 years.