Regal, Ornate, Magical, Epic

Perhaps we can start by introducing or, in your case, Sean, reintroducing you to our audiences. Can you please tell me a little bit about who you are and your career as filmmakers?

SEAN: I've always had lots of interests, but ballet really took over as the main focus from a very young age. All other interests were pushed to the side, but they were always there in the back of my mind. I was really focused on ballet and my social life when I was younger, and now that this transition in my career is happening, I do wish that I had really explored other things earlier—but you have to move forward. I'm learning things all the time, and there's so many things that I want to try out.

My filmmaking journey began when I had the idea to make N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz into a film, which I did with Ellen Bar, former soloist then former media director with the company. That was just an isolated idea. West Side Story was an example of that type of choreography being filmed on location; I thought, “This type of choreography is perfect for this medium, and because it's in sneakers, it can be done on location and not look wrong.” I immediately spoke to Ellen about this idea, and then it just snowballed. Throughout that process, I fell in love with filmmaking. Because I was doing it while I was dancing, the projects were here and there, and it’s still kind of in-process—I’m trying to figure out how to make it my new thing.

TEHILLAH: For the longest time I was pursuing architecture and had the intention of going to architecture school. Things changed last-minute for me; I was all over the place with different artistic mediums, and it was actually my dad who suggested that I apply to film school when I was looking at universities. I was living through my dad's dream. He moved to America, and I think he'd always had an artistic bug, but for practical reasons, I think he just wanted to support his family. He'd always watch movies, so I was always around it, and I took photos all the time when I was growing up; when I didn't know what I wanted to do, he made a light suggestion to go to film school. When I went to Chapman University, I had the intention of being a production designer, because that's the closest thing to architecture. Once I was on a set, I was fully enamored with lighting and grip and all the things that went into composing a shot, and I discovered what a cinematographer does, and so that was my inception as a DP—coming up through the lighting department, then a few years of doing that, and then I jumped to just DP.

Tehilla, I know you collaborated with Sean on the Opus 19/The Dreamer film; had you had any other interest in or work with dance prior to that?

TEHILLAH: I'm a big fan of dance but I’ve never danced anything.

SEAN: You danced around the set! Tehillah was also the camera operator for all the handheld sequences in Opus 19, many of which wove through the choreography. You were moving around with the dancers.

TEHILLAH: It's really amazing to work with someone like Sean, who knows the choreography so well and knows how to communicate well with the dancers, because there are things that I won’t notice.

How did that initial collaboration come together?

SEAN: I was given Tehillah’s reel and I thought it was really impressive. Laura [Snow, media director at NYCB] reached out to her, and that's how it all happened. The process was really wonderful from start to finish. The Opus 19 film was one look, and the idea was to shoot it without steadicam, just static and handheld. Tehillah really liked that idea after watching the choreography. I felt a real connection—we always thought the same things were right. There was never really much back-and-forth and it was very easy to be decisive on set.

TEHILLAH: Yeah, it was so effortless. And it still is effortless to work with Sean. It's so important that the DP and the director have the same taste, because that's kind of half the work—to get on the same page. But with Sean, we're building on each other, which I think is a really healthy way of prepping. He'll present an idea, and then I'll be like, “Wouldn't it be exciting to do this?” It's about elevating each other and that makes each project so exciting to me.

SEAN: I love that kind of collaboration. I like giving an idea, then having someone come back with something else, and that happens over and over again, until you get on set. And that's how this has been.

Please tell me a little bit about your creative process for the Firebird promo.

SEAN: With Firebird, the visual language of the stage production is so specific—these enormous Chagall backdrops. I knew there was no way we were going to be able to recreate that for the film, so I was really trying to build a different visual language that nodded to the stage production, but didn't replicate it. I had a million ideas and a million references that I sent to Tehillah; a lot of those references were fashion photos. She came back with stills from The Color of Pomegranates. Immediately, I thought, “This is absolutely perfect.” Then I watched the film, which I had never seen; it was super exciting to discover this filmmaker’s work, and this film in particular.

TEHILLAH: It was definitely a visual connection which inspired me to share the references to Pomegranates. I was thinking, 'What films look theatrical in the sense that it feels like it's on a stage?' There’s this element to Sergei Parajanov’s work that was in the back of my mind—'In the future, if there’s a project that involves groups of people and has a stage-like, 2D element to it, this could be a powerful reference.' When Sean was describing the costumes and the backdrops and how ornate and intricate they are, it felt similar to when I watched Parajanov’s films. There's this ornate, detail-oriented thing—he wants you to stare at these tableaus for long periods of time.

SEAN: I was in the corps of Firebird for years, as a monster and the youths at the end. I got to see all the costumes and sets up-close, and the design and craftsmanship is just exceptional. There's a real artfulness to the embroidery and beading and patches; the silhouettes are tailored, but a lot of the handwork is very abstract and asymmetrical, so that it maintains that sense that someone made them by hand. I wanted to create something that felt really rich and had that handmade quality, which is another reason why Pomegranates is the perfect reference; it, too, has such a handmade feeling to the production design, while still being so artful and elevated. I wanted people to get the feeling that the ballet is grand and epic, that it's a story ballet, and I wanted the costumes and designs to be on display.

TEHILLAH: When Sean first sent me the choreography, I noticed that there's something really magical about the ballet. I think that connects with the way Pomegranates was edited—a character would randomly pop up or disappear; these little magical elements are really lovely, and they enhanced the costumes and some of the production design we did.

SEAN: After we decided on Pomegranates as a reference, I created the treatment and sent it to NYCB. I always imagined that we would build something that replicated the room-like setup featured throughout Parajanov’s film. But when we went on the location scout, we found this smaller chapel on the campus of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. I was really drawn to this arched basement—here we had something that echoed the style of the Pomegranates backdrops, and we wouldn’t have to build the whole set, we could just art direct the existing space. We chose it for the basement, but there's this enormous cathedral upstairs, which we were able to use to shoot all the dancing sequences.

How did you prepare for the shoot? What was the production like?

SEAN: When you're making these dance films, it's really hard to make something look as dynamic as it does on the Koch Theater stage. You’ll never be able to replicate that. So, I wanted something that felt big enough to frame the full-body choreography. I created a reference sketch of a frame with a dancer, showing how much space I wanted to surround the figure. Tehillah did all this math—“This is how big the stage needs to be. This is how big the backdrop needs to be. This is how far we need to be from the backdrop to frame it this way,” etc. The planning was really meticulous with Tehillah and the production designer.

TEHILLAH: We had a pre-light, which was absolutely essential, because it negated a lot of the on-set conversations (when we’re pressed for time). That’s where we get to play a little bit—I get to audition certain lighting looks, and we can kind of see which options we prefer. This allows a little bit more thought and intention to come into the decision making. I knew we had a lot of shots and that it was a bit intimidating to the team. I was able to say, “Let's not cut any shots until we talk about it in the pre-light. What if it's all within one lighting setup, and we can just crank through it?”

SEAN: The principal dancers had been sent a cut of the choreography that I wanted to capture, which included multiple short moments from the ballet. As far as the other characters, I was directing them and explaining what to do on the day. The dancers are really, really wonderful and professional and can make small adjustments when asked, and that helped speed up the process.

TEHILLAH: It’s shot on 16mm film. It was definitely a conversation because we had to explore the budget. But I just felt that it was so important; if we were really committing to making it feel like Parajanov’s films, it had to be shot on film. There's a certain texture that you can try to replicate digitally, but it’s impossible—the grain, and how the colors are rendered. It just transports you.

I think shooting on film created an atmosphere where everybody was on their A-game, too. After every take it felt like, “We only have a little time or so much film left!” So it made for such an intentional atmosphere. Sometimes you lose it a little bit with digital, when you're endlessly rolling for an hour.

SEAN: I've never worked in the Academy ratio [1.37:1] before, so that was really fun for me, again, thanks to Tehillah. When I made Opus Jazz, we made it in extreme wide frame. At that time, I thought it was really great to shoot dance this way, because there's so much you can fit into the frame. But I found that [the Academy] ratio really works for dance—it’s what they used for An American in Paris, The Red Shoes, The Tales of Hoffmann, Singin’ in the Rain. Even though it's smaller, I think it’s really great for a lot of different things, which I hadn’t originally expected.

A film shoot is just the best way of bringing people together. The producers and Alice Johnson, the AD, look at all the creative, then figure out how to make it work in the most efficient way. The whole shoot is choreographed. It takes a lot of really talented people to do it, and it's super fun when the group is gelling, which I think our team really did.

_{Behind the Scenes photos by Kate Enman © New York City Ballet}