DGA Monthly

1 0 I D G A M O N T H L Y SCREENPULLS: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. You see Margie singing the song, pointing the same recriminating finger at Ray. He's translated it into a hit and she's on fire. We shot single-camera except for the musical sequences. I knew Ray's music better than my camera operators did, so with so much happening onstage, I'd say, "When I tap your shoulder, pan from the drums to the horns and then back when I tap you again," because I had three cameras here but needed six shots. For the musical numbers, the cameras were in fixed positions — not handheld, but with a little movement, which is psychologically important. I always used fixed Panavision lenses because I wanted to shoot as wide open as I could. My lenses are usually between 25 and 75mm — this was probably a 50mm. We also shot anamorphic because the story felt epic to me. 7 Now we're back in the hotel room with Ray, stoned out of his mind, mumbling on the phone to Sam. The bleach bypass makes it almost black-and-white. This is Ray at his lowest. You can hear his dialogue, but Jamie isn't articulating or projecting his voice at all. Production sound mixer Steve Cantamessa was crucial — he had both boom and lavalier mics on Jamie to capture it. Ray won the Oscar for Best Sound Mixing not for its musical numbers, but for its subtlety. Results like this, from collaborations with talented people using subtlety instead of waving flags, make me so proud of Ray. 8 As he gets off the phone, Margie has her bags packed and tells him she's leaving to pursue a solo career. When Ray is stoned, his past and the various women in his life — especially his mother — become a mixed-up mélange of experience. So he mumbles that he doesn't want her to leave, but confuses her with his wife, calling her "Bea." It wasn't in the script, and Regina wasn't prepared for it, so you can see the actual pain of the betrayal we captured on her face. I believe you can capture reality on film when you give actors surprises. Craig Armstrong's string score starts here. The film is filled with R&B and jazz, so I wanted the score to be in contrast. It's the last straw for Margie. She's devastated, and she walks out. 9 Ray says, "I don't want you to go," which is the connective tissue to the next scene of him as a boy, telling his mother he doesn't want to be sent away from home to a school for the blind — which is the last time he saw his mother before she died. We understand that Ray is alone in the dark. This shot is dark — look at the quotient of the shadow. A close-up can say so much, subtly. We next cut to northern Florida, where his mother is standing ramrod straight, her heart breaking because she's sending her baby away on a bus. In the continuum of his dream life, this is his sense of constantly being separated from the women in his life. I shot pretty much in sequence, and you watch his relationship with Margie evolve and then die in this scene, the painful end to a beautiful relationship. 10 SHOT TO REMEMBER Continued from page 9 — DirectorTaylor Hackford on Ray. See more images and text from this article online at www.dga.org.

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