Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/569837
dga quarterly 43 very special feeling. So I felt that on the first day and I was very excited." Calibrating a vibe on a set is dif- ficult for any director, not to men- tion a high-profile movie star who arrives on location, greeted by a cast and crew who might first regard her not as their fearless leader but as the wife of Brad Pitt, mother of six, and a ubiquitous media presence. If Jolie Pitt seems unfazed when asked about how she deals with the baggage of celebrity, perhaps it's because in her role as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador she has traveled to refugee camps in remote parts of the world—Jordan, Kenya, Iraq— places where blending in is a necessity. "I think people watch how you present yourself," says Jolie Pitt. "If you come in and you're there to roll up your sleeves and work hard, you've got a lot of ideas and you're there to help solve problems, then you become that person to them." For her latest movie, By the Sea, which she also wrote, Jolie Pitt could skip the meet-and-greets with at least two of her actors. She stars in the film with Pitt. It's about a deeply unhappy couple on vacation in France who becomes involved with a pair of newlyweds staying at their seaside inn. "I'd be directing myself and him in a scene where we're having a fight, and I'd be pulling out the parts [of him] that have an aggression toward me or when you're frustrated with each other—it was very heavy," says Jolie Pitt. "We kept joking that all of the crew felt like they were living in a house where the parents were fighting and you don't know where to stand or where to look." Filmed in Malta with a primarily European crew and cast, By the Sea was shot by Austrian cinematographer Christian Berger (The White Ribbon) who brought his Cine Reflect Lighting System to the mix. "There's actually very little technical light in the room," says Jolie Pitt of a system that involves using "paniflectors" to illuminate the actors. "It's all based on using an outside source of light and using reflectors, a white plate, in front of the actors. And it felt like doing a play. You're not conscious of the light and so you're also not conscious of staying in PHOTO: MERRICK MORTON/UNIVERSAL PICTURES SERIOUS BUSINESS: (above) Jolie Pitt directed and stars in her upcoming film By the Sea with husband Brad Pitt; (opposite top) Jolie Pitt worked with a largely Bosnian cast on her first film, In the Land of Blood and Honey; (opposite bottom) she spent one-on-one time with her actors to help them prepare on Unbroken. who also uses her getting-to-know-you approach to strategize about performance. "I kept Jack and Mi- yavi separate as much as I could," she says referring to Jack O'Connell who plays Zamperini and the Japanese rock star Miyavi who portrays the sadistic commander of the POW camp. "I knew if they got to know each other that they would be friends. I knew that it was important that there was distance." Part of her style of working has to do with remem- bering what kind of directors she has no patience for when she's acting in a movie (unprepared, in- decisive, indifferent to the delicacy of the dramatic process). But she has also relied on her own obser- vational memory to educate herself on directing, having worked with and watched many of the greats including John Frankenheimer and Clint East- wood. "I don't do one take," she says referencing Eastwood's tendency to shoot very quickly. "But I don't do many takes either—unless an actor wants them. But I'm very clear that I'll be ready so they should be ready and we're going to get this done." No amount of preparation or recollecting how legendary direc- tors conducted business, though, could save her from jitters the night before her first day on the set as a director for In the Land of Blood and Honey. "I was so nervous for so many reasons," says Jolie Pitt who prior to filming asked the cast, many of whom were Bos- nian and had fresh memories of the war, often from different sides, to contribute as many real-life details as possible. Set in war-torn Sarajevo, Blood and Honey chronicles the affair between Danijel (Goran Kosti´ c), a soldier fighting for the Bosnian Serbs, and Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), a Bosnian Slav being held in a woman's pris- oner camp where he's stationed, and where the inmates are rou- tinely beaten and sexually assaulted by their captors. For Day One of her directing career, Jolie Pitt planned to shoot a scene in one long take: Serbian officers pull Bosnian women from a bus, strip them of all of their belongings, and while the rest of the prison- ers watch in terror, one woman is brutally raped. When Jolie Pitt first came up with the idea, she thought of it as a tone-setter. "I thought, 'This is going to shock everybody into the reality of the film—and it will bring us together.' And then I thought, 'These are people who were emotionally affected by this war. This is [either] a good idea or the worst one.'" It wasn't until she saw the cast collectively relaxing during a break— chatting, kicking a soccer ball around—that she realized that her bold approach had worked. From her years of experience as an actor she knew that the best set is one where everyone from the lead actor to the dolly grip feels united in a single goal. "I'm not somebody who wants to be on a set where there's screaming and everyone feels under duress; you want to build a happy family," says Jolie Pitt. "It was a day that wasn't about the shot or how many we got or how long it took or the camera angles. It was about 'What are we doing here? Are we here to feel something together and do something together?' or 'Is it just the technical thing that I want?' I'm not that person. I think something great can happen when you bring the right people together and it's a Continued on page 70