DGA Monthly

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 5 I 3 7 Director Barry Jenkins' animated musical adventure, Mufasa: The Lion King, tells the origin story of Mufasa, a cub lost and alone. After he encounters a sympathetic lion named Taka, the heir to a royal bloodline, their chance meeting sets in motion an expansive journey of a group of misfits searching for their destiny. Jenkins spoke about the film during a discussion moderated by Director Ben Affleck, and shared why 1st AD Shawn Pipkin-West was so important to the making of an animated film. "We needed a 1st AD because we evolved to this point where the camera is almost in a spiritual relationship with the movement with the characters. It creates this energy. But when you're making an animated film there's no live stimulus for the camera to move against. We had to have animators come in because they could understand how to manipulate the suits, that it was a rough translation from two legs to four legs. But what that gave us was we could play any scene out loud on stage with Pip directing everyone like she would in the real world and the animators moving around. I've already directed the performance of the principal cast and voice, now I'm just purely the blocking, the physical performance of the scene with these animators." Barry Jenkins discusses Mufasa: The Lion King photo by Quintin Lundy Photo: Directors Barry Jenkins (right) and Ben Affleck (moderator) discuss the making of Mufasa: The Lion King following the Los Angeles DGA screening on December 21. Membership Screenings Q&As listed in alphabetical order by Director. See more detailed descriptions, additional photos & podcasts online at www.dga.org. DGA Screenings Q&As Director Michael Gracey's musical biographical drama, Better Man, takes a different route to tell the life story of British pop superstar Robbie Williams, with Williams portrayed as a CGI-animated chimpanzee because, as he puts it, he always felt "less evolved than other people." During a discussion about the film moderated by Director Jason Reitman, Gracey shared how he developed his pre-production process on his previous musical feature, The Greatest Showman. "I shot a video version of the film, when I could grab actors in my office, with my iPhone. One of the great advantages of musicals is you sort of lock people in for a rehearsal process because everyone's really terrified of musical numbers so you get this time before the film to really rehearse it out. And so, in that, I would basically do a really bad version of the film that looks like half the shots. But you're trying to block out the whole film so that you can watch it and go, 'This doesn't work. This needs more work.' But that rough version ends up becoming full of storyboards, video vis, pre-vis, 3D pre-vis and it's concept art for the wide shots. So, it's a real mashup of everything you can get your hands on to sort of try and convey what the intention is when you end up on set." Michael Gracey discusses Better Man Photo: Directors Michael Gracey (right) and Jason Reitman (moderator) discuss the making of Better Man following DGA screening in Los Angeles on January 4. photo by Elisa Haber Director James Mangold's biographical drama, A Complete Unknown, takes us back to the early 1960s when 19-year-old Bob Dylan arrived in New York with his guitar, revolutionary talent and a restlessness with the folk movement that leads him to make a controversial choice that reverberates worldwide. Mangold discussed the making of the film during Q&As moderated by Directors Guillermo del Toro in Los Angeles and Bennett Miller in New York. During the Los Angeles conversation, Mangold revealed how what he learned from action films led him to use Dylan's songs to build scenes. "It's not unlike what we've learned making action films, which is that there is no set piece and then drama, they're all just the movie and you can't divide them into these parcels for production purposes. We have to be really conscious of it's not a scene and then a song, it's the song is a scene. It's part of the reason we were so insistent on trying to do so much live and it's also a kind of dramatic awareness you have that if it's just the song and there's nothing else going on triangulating underneath the song in terms of the looks and glances and subtexts and actions. Then it's just a variety show and that's not what we're doing. So, this maintenance of awareness is really important." James Mangold discusses A Complete Unknown photo by Xxx Xxxxx photo by Howard Wise photo by Marcie Revens Photos: Director James Mangold with moderators Guillermo del Toro in Los Angeles on December 7 and Bennett Miller in New York on December 14.

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