Edith Bowman
January 18, 2021
Netflix UK & Ireland (YouTube)
Category: 2020. Mank
How the ‘Mank’ Production Designer Re-created Hearst Castle
David Fincher couldn’t film at William Randolph Hearst’s extravagant location, so production designer Donald Graham Burt built a replica of the legendary San Simeon — with echoes of its portrayal in ‘Citizen Kane’ as Xanadu — on a Los Angeles soundstage.
Carolyn Giardina
March 25, 2021
The Hollywood Reporter
One of the biggest challenges Mank production designer Donald Graham Burt — recently nominated for an Oscar for his work — faced was that the production was not granted access to Hearst Castle on California’s Central Coast. But interiors and exteriors of William Randolph Hearst‘s extravagant estate were needed for key scenes in director David Fincher‘s biopic about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, played by Gary Oldman, during the period in which he wrote the screenplay for Orson Welles‘ 1941 classic, Citizen Kane.
So, with the real San Simeon off-limits, Burt went about designing elaborate sets at Los Angeles Center Studios for interiors like the castle’s dining room, where a messy confrontation occurs during a party. “There’s no way to replicate Hearst Castle, and we weren’t trying to,” says Burt, who has worked with Fincher since 2007’s Zodiac and won an Oscar for the director’s 2008 film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Creative Industry Insight Podcast: Mank (2020) with Production Designer Donald Burt
Bobby Miller
March 22, 2021
Creative Industry Insight Podcast (Instagram)
Creative Industry Insight is a podcast that is dedicated at looking at various roles undertaken in the creative sector.
Production Designer Donald Burt join us to talk about their work on Mank.
Executive Produced by Daniel Miller and Monika Ditton
Artwork Designed by Piotr Motyka
Music by ELPHNT
Contact: creativeindustryinsight@gmail.com
Listen to the podcast:
Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt: ‘Photography doesn’t have to take the front seat’
Riley Chow
March 23, 2021
Gold Derby
“I didn’t want the movie to be a parody of black and white,” reveals “Mank” director of photography Erik Messerschmidt in an exclusive interview with Gold Derby about the greyscale cinematography of the period biopic on Netflix. “I was concerned that that could absolutely happen and if we leaned into it too heavily that the audience would be distracted by the fact that they were watching a black-and-white film,” continues Messerschmidt. He muses, “In many cases, by the way, the photography doesn’t have to take the front seat.” Messerschmidt concludes, “I adored the experience of shooting in black and white. It was fantastic and it was a challenge that I’ve never really had before.”
Roundtable with the 2021 Nominees for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Picture. PGA Awards
March 22, 2021
Producers Guild of America
This illuminating roundtable features the 2021 nominees for the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures.
Participants include: Monica Levinson (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), Charles D. King (Judas and the Black Messiah), Todd Black (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), Ceán Chaffin (Mank), Christina Oh (Minari), Dan Janvey (Nomadland), Jess Wu Calder (One Night in Miami…), Ashley Fox (Promising Young Woman), Sacha Ben Harroche (Sound of Metal) and Marc Platt (The Trial of the Chicago 7).
Moderated by PGA President Lucy Fisher.
Our nominated producers discuss how their films, whether long in development or securing financing on the cusp of production, were driven by a sense of authenticity to their subjects and in some cases, an urgency to reflect the current cultural and political climate.
Recorded live on Saturday, March 20, 2021 during ‘A Day with the PGA Awards Nominees.’
Presented by The Hollywood Reporter. Additional sponsors include: General Motors, Greenslate, Honolulu Film Office, Panavision, Light Iron and Produce Iowa.
The Producers Guild of America is a non-profit trade organization that represents, protects and promotes the interests of all members of the producing team in film, television and new media. The Guild invests in its core values that benefit the industry at large. These values are rooted in facilitating employment of its members, advocating for sustainable practices in production that minimize human and environmental harm, ensuring a set culture that advances safety and creates viable pathways into the guild for the next generation of producers, particularly those from populations under-represented in the industry. Year-round it hosts a number of educational, mentoring and professional networking programs.
Follow the PGA: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIN, Twitter, YouTube.
A Conversation with the Editors of David Fincher’s Motion Picture MANK
Meagan Keane
March 24, 2021
Adobe
Join Adobe for an exciting discussion with the editorial team from Netflix’s Mank featuring special guests Kirk Baxter, ACE, first assistant editor Ben Insler, and assistant editor Jennifer Chung. The team goes behind-the-scenes of the critically-acclaimed, Oscar nominated film to share their creative editing process and collaborative workflows for in-house VFX. Learn how they crafted a modern-day homage to one of the most celebrated films of all time, and overcame the challenges of a remote workflow using Premiere Pro Productions and After Effects.
Kirk Baxter, ACE, has been recognized with Academy Awards for his work on The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, an Academy Award nomination for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and multiple nominations from the American Cinema Editors. The Australian native is a long-time collaborator of David Fincher, including five of the director’s films and two of his series, Mindhunter and House of Cards.
Ben Insler currently works as a feature film assistant editor in Los Angeles, most recently on David Fincher’s Mank. He has previously assisted on television series, documentaries, and commercials, as well as edited for television, independent features and numerous shorts.
Jennifer Chung is an assistant editor working in Los Angeles. Originally from the midwest, she graduated with a BFA in Cinema Art + Science from Columbia College Chicago. She works in scripted tv and film, most recently on the “Blindspotting” series and David Fincher’s “Mank”. Along with assisting, she has also edited numerous shorts, music videos and promotional content.
Adobe on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Adobe Video & Motion (YouTube)
Adobe® Video & Motion tools provide comprehensive video editing, motion design, VFX, sound, & animation for beginners to professionals. All tools are available through Creative Cloud membership.
BAFTA Film Sessions: Make Up & Hair
March 23, 2021
BAFTA Guru (BAFTA)
Make Up and Hair design transforms characters, sometimes into new people, this is a fantastic opportunity to hear from this year’s nominees.
Speakers include:
- Eryn Krueger Mekash, Matthew Mungle, Hillbilly Elegy
- Gigi Williams, Mank
- Matiki Anoff, Sergio Lopez-Rivera, Larry M. Cherry, Mia Neal, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
- Mark Coulier, Pinocchio
Supported by Lancôme
‘Mank’: Costuming Hollywood’s Golden Age in Strategic Black-and-White
Oscar-nominated costume designer Trish Summerville used an iPhone to help her put different puzzle pieces together.
Bill Desowitz
March 23, 2021
IndieWire
Like her fellow Oscar-nominated colleagues, costume designer Trish Summerville had the rare opportunity of working in black-and-white on David Fincher’s “Mank,” which meticulously recaptured the Golden Age of Hollywood in the ’30s. But their work was made easier by the monochromatic settings on their iPhones, allowing them to instantly translate the proper color tones. This way, the look of Summerville’s wardrobes would be in sync with the sets and decor. It was all part of strategic plan to create an authentic-looking monochromatic world.
“I had conversations with [production designer] Don Burt about what his color palettes would be so we wouldn’t have the rooms be so colorful,” Summerville said. “We wanted to have the tones blend. For us in costumes, it was more burgundies, purples, navies, blacks. And you could pump up from there to gowns with muted lilacs or dusty roses, which came in as nice light grays. We also had shell whites or cream whites and stayed away from deep black. It was also being mindful of prints and patterns that could be too bold or too busy. And how to use details that wouldn’t have too much contrast or disappear entirely. For instance, you couldn’t have navy buttons on a navy suit or it would look black.”
Oscar-Nominated Makeup Department Head Gigi Williams on “Mank”
Bryan Abrams
March 23, 2021
The Credits (MPA)
David Fincher‘s Mank is the most Oscar-nominated film of the year, amassing ten, thanks to the beauty and brilliance of its black-and-white execution. One of those nominations belongs to makeup department head Gigi Williams, a veteran who picks her work based on her belief in the director. In Fincher, she was collaborating with one of the most precise filmmakers in the business, and in Mank, working off a script from his father Jack Fincher, Williams had caught the director on what was likely his most personal project to date.
“If your makeup is too loud, you take away from the performance and you don’t belong in this artist’s picture, because Mank is a piece of art that everyone has dabbled in,” Williams says. “Everyone has put their piece into it, and everyone flows together so that nobody stands out. My whole career, I don’t like makeup that’s too big, that makes a statement, if you see my makeup, I’ve failed. I want to see the actor, I want to see the essence of the actor. I love the process of acting. I’m there to facilitate that.”
Losing color opens a whole new world to “Mank” cinematographer
Erik Messerschmidt on the set of “Mank” (Ceán Chaffin/Netflix)
Hugh Hart
March 15, 2021
Los Angeles Times
A couple of years ago, David Fincher’s go-to director of photography, Erik Messerschmidt, described the muted palette of the TV series “Mindhunter” as a product, in part, of the pair’s shared “aversion for magenta.” Color palette proved to be a nonissue during the making of “Mank,” since the movie depicts “Citizen Kane” writer and Hollywood bad boy Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) and his coterie in period-correct black and white. Speaking from Georgia, where he’s prepping the Korean War movie “Devotion,” Messerschmidt half-joked, “The great luxury of black and white is that any nausea [over color] that we might otherwise be dealing with, we didn’t have to worry about for ‘Mank.’”
Previous to filming “Mank,” Messerschmidt, who met Fincher seven years ago while working as a gaffer on “Gone Girl,” had barely shot anything in black and white. “I’d dabbled in still photography as a hobby and shot a couple of very simple music videos, but no features,” he says. “When David called me to do ‘Mank,’ black and white was a foregone conclusion.”
The Fincher Analyst 