Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Fri Nov 22, 2019 12:04 pm
I’ve seen the interviews. But I have professionally worked on behind the scenes documentaries and filmmaker interviews for various film projects on various budgets, and, while I haven’t worked with Star Wars or Disney specifically, I can spot out a scripted corporate shill piece when I see it. All of her interviews have clearly been Disney stamped for approval by the great Bob Iger Himself, and, at the very least, don’t contradict his vision for Star Wars or its relationship with his company.
See, a lot of Behind the Scenes (BTS) material that is stuffed in the home video releases dictated by the studio itself isn’t necessarily for the benefit for the audiences, it’s for the benefit of the shareholders. For example, the video crew isn’t capturing how these special effects are created for the sake of explaining it to the film enthusiast at home following along with the production. In fact, most filmmakers would rather audiences didn’t know about that stuff so as to keep the “Magic of Hollywood” alive. The video crew is actually documenting these things so the shareholders have something to look at to see how their money is being spent and how well the filmmakers they’ve hired are using the budget allotted to them. BTS content is literally a form of “Big Brother” coming in and making a record of the workflow of that particular production, so everyone documented and interviewed is making sure that they’re saying and doing the right thing by the standards of those shareholders.
Personally, this was a huge learning curve for me going into the industry myself, since this isn’t really a thing that they teach you in film school. They teach you the importance and nuance of film language and various methods of narrative interpretation as the like. So my first couple jobs were constantly punctuated with worried crew members not wanting to incriminate themselves or otherwise look bad, and asking me, “Hey, you weren’t recording that, were you?” Meanwhile the producer wanted my cameras rolling at all times in an attempt to incentivize productivity.
This isn’t to say that no BTS features are made in Hollywood with the viewers in mind. Pixar’s BTS offerings with their first half of collector’s edition DVD releases (from their movies Toy Story thru Cars) actually have a wonderful set of entertaining BTS features made with at least a peripheral goal for audience consumption, peaking somewhere around Finding Nemo with their first film made with a documentary crew throughout the whole production. But after the Disney acquisition of Pixar (made in part by hiring John Lasseter as Disney’s CCO) their special features pivoted in a major way, becoming less off-the-cuff-yet-thorough in their deliveries and more formalized and structured, and including scripted segments like “Women in Pixar” and things like that. (To me, “Women in Pixar” specifically became a real obvious example of a scripted diversion from the at the time yet-undisclosed ongoing sexual harassment from John Lasseter toward the various women who were working at Pixar, as well as a diversion from the rather public lay-off of Brenda Chapman as director of Brave.)
By the by, you’ll notice that the Pixar BTS post Disney acquisition follow a similar format to the BTS of Star Wars post Disney acquisition. The George Lucas prequel days were even similar to the old Pixar BTS of somewhat off-the-cuff-yet-thorough, then pivoting to scripted, structured, and formal under Disney’s supervision. What’s used as “Big Brother” to document the crew is retooled as sizzle reels and promotional materials for the consumer’s disc purchase. This includes interviews with people like Kathleen Kennedy. She (like Kevin Feige, BTW) is hired to jump when she’s told to. If she’s documented on video as not jumping when told, then Bob Iger will just hire someone else who will. Simple as that.
movieartman wrote:https://www.comicbookmovie.com/sci-fi/star_wars/making-a-star-wars-film-is-difficult-due-to-a-lack-of-comics-and-novels-says-lucasfilm-president-a171739
