Why Nomadland Won Best Director

thanks to nordpass for sponsoring this video here's a behind-the-scenes clip from the production of nomadland what you're seeing here is almost the entire production crew for the film and if you're familiar with film production you know that this is an incredibly small crew even for a mid-size indie film like this but director chloe zhao's approach to shooting nomad land was very different from how a lot of directors approach shooting a film nomad land is a film about fictional protagonist fern as she plots a course across the american landscape [Music] it relies heavily on natural light grounds its story in the incredible landscapes and nature that serve as a backdrop for life on the road intimately explores the personal experience of its characters utilizes non-actors playing themselves to populate the communities of nomadic workers in the film [Music] adopts a probing reactive style of handheld camera work to evoke a sense of something that lies beyond the frame and utilizes non-continuity editing to drift seamlessly from moment to moment [Music] michelle doesn't know yeah you should take this one that that one's kind of funky let's look at this moment from nomad land and pay close attention to the visual characteristics of the scene yeah these yours yeah there's a black hole in every van when i look at this some key visual elements stand out to me the use of natural light the freedom of the handheld camera and the use of a wide angle lens i make them okay sure wow what is this crochet one or more of these elements are present in almost every scene throughout the film the natural sunlight always low in the sky and positioned to backlight or sidelight the characters the camera that is free to respond and is clearly reacting to characters in the moment and the wide-angle lenses that keep the environment and setting always present in the frame even during close-ups it's easy to think zhao might just be making these choices so the film looks a certain way but i think they are born out of an approach to filmmaking that pretty radically departs from how your average production operates [Music] to understand the context of zhao's work and direction we need to travel back a little ways in film history 40 years before zhao made nomad land director terence malik released his second film days of heaven which focuses on a few characters within a community of nomadic workers it is firmly anchored in natural light and nature and intimately explores the personal experience of its characters before that malek's first film badlands plotted a course across the american landscape in the thin red line and the new world with the help of legendary cinematographer emmanuel lebeske malik would develop a probing reactive style of handheld camera movement that used very wide angle lenses to ground the characters in their environment and the nature that surrounded them in malik's contemporary films he would begin to work with a combination of actors and real people and would often abandon continuity editing for something more impressionistic zhao is not merely a visual copy of malik like malik zhao and her cinematographer aren't simply trying to create an interesting visual style they are making choices about how they approach production that are intimately connected to the visual elements of the film we sometimes tend to think of a film's style how it looks and feels on screen as something that is primarily an aesthetic decision on the part of the director and crew and it is in a way but thinking of how a film looks as being primarily motivated by trying to achieve a specific look leads us to misunderstand why a style develops organically and why certain filmmakers are drawn to that style i think many stylistic movements in film instead of being motivated by an attempt to achieve a certain unique visual aesthetic instead arise out of a unique approach to how the film is made that results in a look on screen as a byproduct of the approach to production so in theory we can look at these stylistic characteristics of malek and zhao's films and potentially find the motivation behind these choices the natural light for example the use of low natural sunlight looks good but it's as much a choice of practicality and function as it is style relying on natural light means you don't need as many crew members or as much bulky lighting equipment this allows you to be more reactive to the environment to travel to locations more quickly and affordably and gives the actors more freedom to move through their environments while working since they aren't confined to part of the set that has been pre-lit the wide-angle lenses not only do they keep the surrounding location visible but they make smooth adaptive handheld camera movement easier to pull off the camera's ability to be reactive allows more of the control of the scene to be placed in the hands of the actors allowing them to walk and stand where they want and it puts less pressure on non-actors to remember blocking and hit marks and shooting this way ends up shaping how you edit and structure the film no mad land like many of malik's films trades out continuity editing to operate mostly as a kind of montage scenes are rarely edited in continuity in nomad land instead most play out like this one okay okay okay the scene of linda mae leaving is constructed out of just four shots between each if you pay close attention there's a clear jump in time yet the cuts are placed carefully enough that none of them are visually jarring this style of editing serves as a stylistic device but it's also practical it allows for longer more improvisational takes to be shot and then shaped into a scene the editing and shooting styles are interwoven when you don't have to worry about cutting to reverse shots you don't have to worry about shooting them which means you can be more flexible as you shoot and it helps you when working with golden hour natural light shooting a whole scene like this one in one take and then cutting it into a final scene allows you to work quickly in the brief window of light you have available and the roving camera is important for editing scenes like this if the camera was more static there would be fewer opportunities to cut out sections without creating a jump cut and again this helps give the actors more flexibility and freedom i think most if not all of these stylistic choices for both malik and zhao arise out of two motivating factors a desire to ground their films in real locations and people and wanting to give themselves and the people they put in front of the camera freedom but why is that freedom important to malik and zhao i think malik's style arose organically as he started radically changing how he approached producing films often shooting without scripts or dialogue and attempting to find the film as he went in an interview with asc zhao talks about taking a similar approach about making a film as a search for answers to a question rather than as a way to state something you already know xiao says it's almost a necessity for him to explore something he wants to understand about the world about human existence about all these bigger questions he had and that shines through his cinema that's why his films are so intimate and so universal at the same time he's exploring questions that everyone can relate to there's a lot of myself asking these questions as well and by making these films i was able to have some of them explored for zhao making the film is a process of discovering the story the greater freedom and flexibility and the approach to production gives you a greater ability to follow the story where it leads i think this is why some other filmmakers seem to come up empty when they emulate or build upon malik's style because a visual style by itself isn't that compelling you have to understand the underlying reasons a filmmaker came to that approach or that style and chloe zhao seems to understand this in malik and in nomadland she finds a style that is an extension and progression of malik's influence and not just an imitation malik's influence has already been significant but it's mostly manifested in filmmakers emulating his visual motifs for brief moments but not many people are truly adopting malik's philosophical and practical approach and doing something interesting with that and i'm not insinuating that zhao's work is merely derivative of malik instead i think it may be part of the beginning of a larger stylistic movement one of my favorite writers derek sivers once said that the first follower is an underrated form of leadership that the first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader and even though zhao may be adopting an approach that malek helped pioneer it's an approach and style that lets the voice of the filmmaker and actors take center stage even though aspects of the approach to production may be similar zhao's work is distinct from alex because her voice is distinct and that's given a lot of room to shine through with this approach nomad land isn't a film malik would have or could have made his version would have looked very different even if they shared overlap in terms of visual style and this is why i think chloe jean deserves the best director oscar because she's helping push the medium forward in an interesting way regardless of whether nomad land is the best film out of the films made by the best director nominees zhao models the most inventive and progressive use of direction out of these nominees all these other directors are operating at the top of their class within styles and approaches that are fairly developed and entrenched while i think zhao is helping to push the medium into new territory something i strongly value as a film critic viewer and filmmaker thank you so much to nordpass for sponsoring this video look if you aren't using a password manager i can almost guarantee you're compromising in some way either you are 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Channel: Thomas Flight

Views: 95,187

Keywords: Video Essay, Thomas Flight, Nomadland, Chloe Zhao, Best Director, Best Picture, Chloe Zhao Diretor, Nomadland Director, Nomadland Oscar, Frances McDormand, Terrence Malick, Direction, Nomadland Review, Nomadland style

Id: XdgI_zqvHjs

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 27 2021