ADG Perspective

May-June 2022

Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1470106

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W O M E N O F T H E M O V E M E N T | P E R S P E C T I V E 8 1 When the opportunity to be a part of telling the story of Mamie-Till Mobley and her fi ght for justice after the brutal lynching of her 14-year- old son, Emmett Till, presented itself to me, the word challenging took on a whole new meaning. As a Black woman and mother of two sons, there was an immense weight of responsibility of getting this story right for Mamie and all mothers who lost their children to violence rooted in racism. Thankfully, with an equally passionate crew led by fearless show runner Marissa o erar, the process was fi lled with heart and purpose from everyone involved in this production—a production that intentionally had women in most key roles across all departments. I had the honor of working directly with four phenomenal directors: Gina Prince-Bythewood, Tina Mabry, Julie Dash and Kasi Lemmons. Much of the Art Department research and the research of the writers was taken from various books, including historian Devery Anderson's incredibly detailed Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement and Mamie's memoir, The Death of Innocence. These resources, along with historic photos and other documentaries, were our guidepost, always leading us to authenticity. I would listen to Anderson's audiobook on my commute from my home in New Orleans to Mississippi, often annotating diff erent visual details of the environments through my own voice recordings while driving. The production o ce had its own COVID bubble in Greenwood, MS, once known as "The Cotton Capital of the World." During preproduction in November, which was the tail end of the harvest season, I remember driving around watching remnants of cotton fallen from trucks, being wisped around on the roads and collecting on the shoulders like snow. The production bought out two hotels to accommodate the entire crew and most of the cast, none of whom were local. This meant that no one had their families and friends to go home to at the end of a long day, creating another layer of di culty. With limited available local resources (the nearest Home Depot was two hours away!) and an emotionally heavy script, we all hunkered down to invest ourselves in being a part of retelling an essential piece of civil rights history. The most dynamic part of being centered in Greenwood was that the incident that changed Mamie Till's life had happened in a nearby town called Money, where Emmett was visiting relatives in 1955. It was only twenty minutes away, and the tragedy that took his life and the location where his body was discovered also occurred in adjacent towns. Needless to say, scouting turned into emotional historic tours often led by the production's tireless location manager, Wendall Hinkle. He had done much of the legwork on these places while interviewing locals for months ahead of o cial preproduction. I will never forget the day the crew scouted the shed where Emmett was actually killed. It was a relatively nice day and we had been to several locations fi rst. But as we approached the location, which was still a shed and was being used to store the current homeowners farm equipment, the weather turned gray, cold and it started drizzling. We learned that the FBI had taken soil samples to fi nd mmett's DNA, almost fi fty years after his murder, from the very spot where we were standing. As we discussed the possibility of really shooting the fi nal scenes of Emmett's life there, the idea of bringing in a crew to make it a fi lm set felt very unsettling to me. So, we decided to shoot that moment somewhere else despite our quest for authenticity. Regardless of being in such close proximity to the legitimate locations of the story, Art Director Christine Foley and I collectively accumulated about twenty-eight thousand miles of driving throughout the Mississippi Delta, Memphis and other parts of Tennessee during the course of prep and production. Between our one hundred eleven amortized and episodic sets, there was only one stage build, which was the interior of Mamie's Chicago apartment. The Greenwood Civic Center was converted into the production's sound stage, building half of the set on the existing theatrical stage and the other half on a platform added by construction. This was to accommodate any other potential builds which did not end up happening, save for a swing set which was a recreation of a location that had already previously been shot and could not be returned to. A. INTERIOR MAMIE'S APARTMENT. SET SKETCH BY MICHELLE HARMON. B. INTERIOR MAMIE'S APARTMENT. LIVING ROOM WITH RECREATED EMMETT PHOTO. SAMPLE BOARD. C. INTERIOR MAMIE'S APARTMENT. EMMETT'S ROOM. SAMPLE BOARD.

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