DGA Monthly

1 4 I D G A M O N T H L Y SCREENPULLS: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTAINMENT Haqqani kisses his nephew and sends him on his journey. The blood is CG because putting squibs on any actor's head would be way too dangerous. Suraj is an intuitive actor, and his reaction felt real every time. Carrie is horrified. She'd used Aayan and had made the decision to take them all out — as we've seen her do with many others — but by capturing Saul, Haqqani switches the power dynamic. Tracking the power shifts was why it was so important to sometimes be down on the ground with Haqqani and not just in Carrie's drone point of view. Our composer, Sean Callery, created a low, tonal and sophisticated score here, creating tension but never pushing the story — but this is where the background score stops. You can't be scared of the silence because, juxtaposed with the sound, the human breath, it creates tension. Nothing is ever comfortable or resolved in Homeland. 7 Claire Danes is extraordinary. She opens her mouth and speaks the truth. You could play the whole scene on Claire's face and you would get the story. Carrie gives the order to take the shot, but Quinn contradicts it because Saul is in the car with Haqqani. Again, it's a layered frame on a long lens, complicating things and compressing all the elements of control we think we have: Carrie, Quinn, and Redmond; maps and drones and ways of spying. I wanted that layering of moral and political ambiguity. But at the end of the day, it's about human beings. Who's in control? I played around with focus here because she's the one saying, "do it," and Quinn is saying, "don't," and the poor drone guy is like, "Who do I follow, here?" Carrie's in profile and we get Quinn as he turns — it's an almost intimate blocking juxtaposed with the incredibly high stakes. 8 This is so intimate, as Quinn grabs Carrie. He knows that if she drops fire on Saul — her father-like figure — her soul is gone. It's like they barely can be in the same frame. It's about the space in between them as well as the characters. They've both done terrible things in the name of good and they get each other. This is a handheld shot on a very long lens, so the frame is changing, really going with the action. I don't mind that there's a buzz in this kind of situation because it makes it feel real and in the moment. Then, Carrie comes back to herself. Quinn goes for humanity and at the end of the day, so does she. But without him, she would have probably dropped the bomb … or would she? 9 We did a lot of very still handheld so that there's some human breath in the shot. The whole scene could have been on Carrie and her POV, but it wouldn't have landed as strongly if you didn't feel Haqqani as a human being. We used lots of quick cuts in the ops room, attempting to track the emotional connections between all the characters. This shot is the human tragedy, that this young medical student, because of all the surrounding circumstances, is lying dead in the middle of the mountains with the politics of the world circling around him. The story of his life is the human toll of geopolitical events, and it's tragic. 10 SHOT TO REMEMBER Continued from page 12 — Director Lesli Linka Glatter on Homeland, "The Drone Queen" See more images and text from this article online at www.dga.org.

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