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THE COLOR PURPLE www.postmagazine.com 27 POST NOV/DEC 2023 T he Color Purple, from Warner Bros. Pictures, presents the novel by Alice Walker as a theatrical musical. Directed by Blitz Bazawule (Black Is King, The Burial of Kojo), the film was produced by Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Scott Sanders and Quincy Jones. Taraji P. Henson stars as Shug Avery, alongside Fantasia Barrino, who portrays Celie, with Danielle Brooks taking on the role of Sophia. The film also stars Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins, H.E.R., Halle Bailey and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. Bazawule partnered with director of pho- tography Dan Laustsen (John Wick: Chapter 4, The Shape of Water) for the shoot, and Jon Poll (Bombshell, The Greatest Showman) for the edit. Here, the director talks about his first major studio feature and how the film's music, choreography, sets and performances all came together. Blitz, this film is obviously very dependent on the music for the production. What shape was the music in when you began filming? "Absolutely! I preferred to have my music as com- plete as possible. Some of that music is exactly what we shot to that appears in the film, maybe with a little mix and a little mastering. I believe in doing that because it allows the artist, the musi- cian, the performer to perform with conviction. If the music isn't weighty (or) finished…it's very diŸcult for the performer to believe. And it wasn't just about my actors. It was also about my dancers. We had big musical numbers with upwards of 100 dancers, and it was very important that they believed that this music was actually happening in the right context. To do that required us to — very early — make sure that our music was solid. It's very diŸcult to go back and rejigger music and performance, so I wanted to prevent all of that by starting with a clear idea of what the music was going to be — tone wise and scale wise — and then we shot to that." How closely does the film's music follow that of the Broadway show? "It's music that is absolutely inspired by the Broadway show. But, as you know, Broadway music doesn't have to adhere to any timestamps or any real realism. The audience kind of suspends disbelief, and in film, you don't have that privilege. You have to be time conscious: When is this music happening and what's the historical context in which it's happening? "One of the biggest and earliest things I did was split the music into three parts: gospel, blues and jazz, because I felt those would be the clearest arc of African-American music and how I could create the film around that arc. Then I went and found practitioners of those genres of music. I brought in Ricky Dillard for gospel. I brought in Keb' Mo' for four blues. And I brought in Christian McBride for jazz. They worked together, but also separate- ly in bringing realism to the music. So it wasn't Broadway. It was really lived-in music, which was something that we did a lot — not just musically, but in production design and camera work. I want- ed everything to feel lived in." Can you talk about shooting the musical sequences. Is there a lot of starting and stopping? "It started first with Fatima Robinson, my brilliant choreographer. I like long takes as a director. I'm not big on that kind of abbreviated approach, so I made sure that our dance sequences were long. We rehearsed that the whole sequence, and we could do it in a take. Then we reset a camera and we do that take again. It's hard work and laborious, but for me, it's the most believable, and it's also an old-school way in how musicals were done…These days you don't have a lot of that. Some of it is just time and money. We really focused on making sure that these dance sequences were seamless and they were the full thing. Maybe not the whole song, but half of the song would be fully rehearsed so we could shoot. "Then there was also a lot of camera choreogra- phy, so it wasn't just the dance. (Cinematographer) Dan Laustsen and myself spent a lot of time in rehearsals with the dancers, finding our scenes, finding our shots and finding when this is a good point to cut after a minute of dancing. We could stop them, reset to do another minute of dance and such and such, so it was a very fluid process. And I think it also it puts the artisans' work on dis- play. It also makes it easy for my editorial staˆ to find the best bits from long sequences." When it came to cameras, were you relying on Dan Laustsen for input? "Dan and I worked very closely to pick everything: lenses, camera format, everything. We debated, and we shot diˆerent formats, and went and watched it and asked ourselves, 'What is the best way in which this film should exist?' Dan was very helpful there, and incredibly knowledgeable. His resume is up there, so he was like my guide in that regard, but also very open to try new things. "We shot with an Arri, and we also understood that we were going to be shooting in the American South and wanted those tones. So a lot of our work, (and) a lot of the choices were based on location. We also knew that the camera was going to be fluid. It's a lot of Steadicam work, and there was a lot of crane work that allowed us to find big, big dance sequences. One of the things Dan and I talked about very early was: How do we stay away from one of the things that plagues most musicals? Here are these rambunctious dance sequences, where the camera's liberated and flies around, and here are these static narrative scenes, which kind of end up being almost conflicting styles that have to live together? "Dan and I were very thoughtful about that, and making sure that we were choreographing with Fatima. So it wasn't just the actors moving around in within a frame. If it was a big dance sequence, the camera was doing a similar thing so that when it all cuts together, it is very rare that we have stat- ic scenes. And when they're static, they're static for a reason." I understand the production took place in Georgia. What was shot on-location versus a stage? "The shoot was 72 days. We did easily 30 percent on physical location, and about 70 percent on a stage. A lot of our movie takes place indoors. Some of our bigger exteriors live outdoors, so that was kind of the balance." This isn't a visual eŽects film, but nowadays, every film has some amount of VFX. What were the needs for this film? "A lot of it went to skies and sky replacement, be- cause when you're shooting physical locations for that many days, it's hard to keep your skies consis- tent. That was one of the biggest things. When you have an overcast day and she needs to be sunny, you know, you have to do that. Dan and I are very practical filmmakers. Along with Paul Denham Austerberry, our production designer, we built a lot of practical eˆects. Our giant gramophone, which Celie sings to Shug Avery, was built practi- cally. The only thing we added was the horn of the gramophone, but the entire apparatus is actually Director Blitz Bazawule