PROMOTIONAL ISSUE PRESENTED BY
PAINTING OF A GENIUS
ANTONIO BANDERAS’ PICASSO LEADS THE CREATIVE CHARGE IN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC’S LATEST GROUNDBREAKING PROGRAMMING
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CONTENTS INTRO
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With 130 years of science and exploration expertise, National Geographic heads into the future onscreen
FEATURES
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PAINTING A MASTER The creative magic behind Genius: Picasso’s Spanish shoot
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REVEALING JANE Jane Goodall on trusting Brett Morgen to use footage of her unseen life in Jane
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INTO THE WILD Savage Kingdom narrator Charles Dance recalls his adventures in Africa
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EXTREME MEASURES Life Below Zero producer Crofton Diack and DP John Griber on living and shooting at -40°F
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HOME FRONT The Long Road Home cast and crew on bringing a realistic Iraq to the U.S. set
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THE OVERHEAD Neil deGrasse Tyson on his favorite StarTalk guests, and the mysteries of existence
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THE FINAL FRONTIER EPs Darren Aronofsky and Jane Root on One Strange Rock’s unique view of our planet
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TAKING ON THE WORLD NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC STANDS BY ITS MISSION TO TELL THE SCIENTIFIC STORIES OF OUR PLANET AND BEYOND. BY ANTONIA BLYTH AND MATTHEW CAREY
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AVING SET ITS PLACE as the premium destination for science, exploration and adventure programming, National Geographic consistently brings onscreen content that inspires, entertains and educates. “National Geographic is the only network that’s part of a 130-year-old scientific organization that has been committed to telling the stories of our world,” says CEO Courteney Monroe, “and one we feel just as committed to then as we do today. It is quite literally part of our DNA.” Indeed, the network has always dreamed big and never shied away from large-scale, intimidating projects. One such gem in their current programming is One Strange Rock – a ten-part series reimagining Earth’s beauty from the point of view of astronauts; using six separate camera crews to travel the globe and capture stunning scenes of life, along with top-notch visual effects and some of the best creative minds in the business. Darren Aronofsky says one of the reasons he came on board One Strange Rock as EP is National Geographic’s passionate dedication to science programming. “I do feel that science needs good publicity,” he says. “In a lot of places in our country, science is under attack. Right now, we have people in power who believe in the power of Tweeting but don’t necessarily believe in climate change.” As his co-EP Jane Root says, “We’re living in a moment where understanding science, and supporting it, and understanding the urge, and loving it has never been more important.” Monroe agrees emphatically. “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that science is under siege,” she says. “At National Geographic, we believe in the power of storytelling to change the world.” The network is, she adds, driven to “trumpet the importance of science and to incubate future explorers and scientists.”
The storytelling extends to championing the life and work of people like Jane Goodall—the woman famed for studying apes in their natural habitat. The documentary Jane employs previously-unseen 1960s archival National Geographic footage. Goodall’s concerns about attitudes to our planet only serve to highlight the importance of the network’s mission. “We are destroying the world so fast,” she says. “If you care about nature, and you care about kids, and you look at what politicians are doing around the world, it’s pretty grim.” StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson is another example of the network’s ongoing commitment to science. In its fourth season, the series sees astrophysicist deGrasse Tyson answering the big scientific questions in a digestible form, with help from his celebrity guests. “Without National Geographic, I don’t know what sort of compass we would have to guide us into what it is to discover,” he says. “Discovery, historically, was, what’s over the mountain? What’s across the valley? Then it was, what’s across the ocean? Then it’s, what is beyond the Earth’s surface? National Geographic has all of these frontiers in the portfolio. “You look at the line-up of programming and it takes you to all of those places in ways that hardly any other outfit does.” ★ D E A D L I N E .C O M / AWA R D S L I N E
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DOWN TO A THE CREATIVE TEAM BEHIND GENIUS: PICASSO DISCUSS THE PRODUCTION’S OFF-CAMERA MAGIC. BY MATT GROBAR
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hile Season 1 gave us a richly-detailed portrayal of the godfather of science, Albert Einstein, National Geographic anthology series Genius moves into the arts for its second season, delving deep into the life of iconic Spanish painter Pablo Picasso. Portraying Picasso had been a longtime ambition of Antonio Banderas, who, like the painter, hails from Málaga. Outside of biographies, documentaries and trips to museums, he actually became a great source of Picasso intel for his below-the-line collaborators, who included costumer Sonu Mishra, DP Mathias Herndl, and hair and makeup designer Davina Lamont. Having set such a strong framework in Season 1—with textured, immersive and periodaccurate visuals across the board—the team threw out the playbook somewhat with Season 2, Lamont admits. “It just took on this whole new persona,” she says. In this new season, there was a different approach to differentiating timelines, with the present day shot with a locked-down, paintery lense, while flashbacks from Picasso's youth were handled with what Herndl calls “a very kinetic, energetic camera.” There were also many more actors in this season, particularly women, many of whom had to be aged with make-up as the story progressed. One especially challenging aspect was the visual blending of two Picassos: the povertystricken younger version played by Alex Rich, and then Banderas’ grown-up, wealthy, successful version. The two actors together spanned several decades of the artist’s life, and very different lifestyles, and the production had to deftly handle that, including hair and make-up. “The key when it came to looks was to try and hit all the periods, from the 1860s right up to the 1970s,” Lamont explains. She adds that to play Picasso, Banderas would shave his head and eyebrows, wear a fake nose and fake teeth, and throw on several wigs for good measure. For costumer Mishra, Season 2 has been a liberating experience. “The first season was quite contained,” she says, “as far as style was concerned. But here we have 93 years of costumes. It’s really quite unbelievable how much we covered.” She adds that Season 2 will feature more striking silhouettes, as well as a warmer and more colorful palette, with bordeaux reds, golds and deep blues capturing “the essence of Mediterranean light.” What comes through across the board is that everyone involved has a huge appreciation for Picasso, considering him one of the most influential artists of all time. “For me and my friends in Rome,” Mishra says, “we say after Michelangelo, Pablo Picasso was the one who really changed the way one looks at art. For me, his lifestyle and his lifetime were enormous. He created so much, and he gave so much to the world.” ★
MAKING A MASTERPIECE Clockwise, from top left: Lamont fixes Banderas’ hair; Herndl (far right) with showrunner and director Kenneth Biller (center), and Rich (seated); costume designer Mishra; shooting a traditional Spanish scene, and outdoor planning.
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O A FINE ART
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DIFFERENT ERAS Alex Rich (left) in action; a silver-haired Banderas as the mature painter.
PAINTING AN ICON ANTONIO BANDERAS AND ALEX RICH ON PLAYING TWO VERSIONS OF THE SAME ARTIST IN GENIUS: PICASSO. BY ANTONIA BLYTH Antonio, you and Picasso both come from Malaga–did that give the role extra appeal? Antonio Banderas: Picasso has been a very important figure in my life. When I was going to school, we always crossed in front of Picasso’s house where he was born. At that time, in Spain, we didn’t have too many international heroes because we were isolated by the dictatorship. Picasso broke through that barrier. I was offered to play Picasso when I was younger, and I always said no because I was fearful of doing the role the improper way. This particular time with National Geographic, it came with guarantees that we were going to tell the story accurately. You each play Picasso at different ages, how did you work together to create a seamless transition? Alex Rich: We’ve been able to discuss everything from the technicalities, to the emotions behind the choices, and it’s been such a pleasure. I would see him onset and pick up on things. He’s been extremely
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generous with this creative process. I’ve been so lucky to collaborate with somebody who knows him so well. Antonio Banderas: He started by trying to follow my accent. I’m Spanish and from Malaga like Picasso, which for me is kind of a relief because I don’t have to fake anything. Alex is more imitating me because of the authenticity of being from the same place. How did you prepare for the painting scenes? Antonio Banderas: I practiced painting to familiarize myself mostly with how to hold the brushes, and to see how they interact with the paint. I really enjoyed the process and gained a true appreciation for just how difficult painting is, and how incredibly talented Picasso was. Alex Rich: I met with an instructor in Malaga and went to Picasso museums to see his work up close and personal. You can see the attention to detail, how the brush was moving and what tools he was using, like was he using a palette knife versus using a brush. ★
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ritics have raved about Brett Morgen’s documentary Jane, but perhaps no one is more taken with the film than the woman whose story it tells: primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall. “It’s an honest film,” Goodall says in her characteristically forthright style. Goodall’s praise may come as something of a surprise, given her original hesitation about consenting to another film on her life and work. “I thought there had been enough made,” she recalls responding to the suggestion. Unbeknownst to her at the time, Morgen harbored similar reservations at first. “I had this reaction, ‘This film’s been done a hundred times. Is there any reason to make this film?’” he says. The answer was yes, Morgen discovered, once he got a look at the untapped goldmine of source material: wondrous footage from
fashioned tools to collect food, a capacity then believed only possessed by humans. They also talked about the man who filmed her work in Gombe for National Geographic, Dutch filmmaker Hugo van Lawick. Goodall and van Lawick were strangers to each other when he arrived, but they later developed a romantic attachment, married and had a child. “To me the most exciting part when we screened through the [original footage] was when we realized we were watching Hugo and Jane falling in love,” Morgen marvels. Morgen built his narrative around the archival film and Goodall’s book In the Shadow of Man, constructing Jane to allow viewers to feel what she felt and see what she saw. That, in the end, is what makes the doc unique among films about Goodall. “I wasn’t trying to impose a narrative that
INTO THE W DIRECTOR BRETT MORGEN & CONSERVATIONIST JANE GOODALL ON REVISITING HER LIFE & WORK IN THE DOCUMENTARY JANE. BY MATTHEW CAREY the early years of Goodall’s pioneering research into wild chimpanzees in the forests of Gombe, Tanzania. Those 140 hours of film had gone undetected in National Geographic archives for more than 50 years. Goodall eventually agreed to a concise interview that turned into something longer. “It was about two-and-a-half days,” she says. “Long days.” She and Morgen discussed how Goodall, as a young untrained researcher in the early 1960s, had withstood isolation and challenging conditions in the forest, her persistence rewarded when she witnessed something no other scientist had documented before—that chimps
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was created by the network, or an outside producer, but simply trying to visualize and give birth to Jane’s descriptions,” he says. “Embracing Jane’s point of view was really the reason this film came into being.” The film has won numerous awards for best documentary of the year, including from five major guilds, the National Board of Review and 18 critics groups, making it one of the top nonfiction titles of the past year. “Brett showed it how it was in Gombe,” Goodall affirms. “And that’s the difference. None of the other documentaries [about me] have actually taken me back to how I was. Literally, I was that young girl again.” ★
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SAFARI SOUNDS SAVAGE KINGDOM NARRATOR CHARLES DANCE DISCUSSES HIS JOURNEY DEEP INTO THE UNDERBRUSH. BY MATT GROBAR
ON THE MIC Dance enjoyed the project’s fresh, unique style of narration.
What attracted you to the voiceover work in Savage Kingdom? I’ve done a fair amount of voice work in the 40 years that I’ve been an actor, and I like the documentary form of filmmaking, as long as the scripts are well written and not overdone. Sometimes, there’s a temptation on the part of documentary filmmakers to underestimate the intelligence of an audience. That is not the case with Savage Kingdom. What they did while writing the narration was to employ this device where there’s not just straight narration; where I would comment as a representative of the audience, basically. I think it’s unique what they’ve done, this style of shooting a documentary, and the style of the narration, and that’s what appealed to me. What surprised you the most in the making of this series? Principally the [filmmaking] process. After the first series, Nat Geo WILD had a press junket out in Botswana, and asked me if I would go. Part of the teaser for it was a two- or three-day safari, which was fantastic. To actually go out with Brad [Bestelink, director] and a couple of the cameramen—they’re kind of like Crocodile Dundee characters. They spend their day in shorts and a shirt and boots, and go out in a Toyota Land Cruiser with a camera strapped on the side of the truck. They take enough food for maybe a couple of weeks, and they basically stay out there. It’s astonishing to actually be in those locations where this leopard had been, it’s kind of hairs on the back of your neck time. What they do, they do on their own, and it takes an enormous amount of patience and phenomenal skill to achieve what they manage to get. ★
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ZERO TO HERO A
s far as television productions go, it’s difficult to imagine conditions tougher than those experienced by producer Crofton Diack and DP John Griber on docuseries Life Below Zero. Following the workaday struggles of those living in remote areas of Alaska, Life Below Zero requires an extreme level of physical and mental resilience from its production team. “It just takes a different kind of person,” Griber says of the gig. One of several Producer/DP teams on the series, Griber and Diack are used to harsh conditions. Griber is a hunter and fly fishing guide who has scaled Everest multiple times, while Diack spent years as an instructor for Outward Bound. On a purely technical level too, the series is a tough gig. Going up to Alaska eight times a year, the team have either very limited light for shooting, or sunshine all day long, depending on the season. At times, there are just three hours
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of light—and that’s ambient light, with the sun sitting beneath the horizon–and in Alaska’s winter, temperatures can get down to 40 below zero. The pair have had to find their way through the cold months with a combination of trial and error, dealing with lens malfunction, frozen pixels, and foxes chewing up audio cables. However, with their ‘run-and-gun’ set-up, shooting with a vérité approach, for the most part their cameras are better off than they are. As Griber points out, they ultimately worry more about themselves than their equipment. “The cameras can handle the cold,” he says. “We’re the weak link in that whole system.” What they find most crucial when it comes to maintaining warmth—besides upwards of nine layers of clothing—is gloves of different sorts that can keep the hands warm, while allowing dexterity with the camera. In Diack’s words, “Your hands are everything.” In the warm months, they tend to
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LIFE BELOW ZERO COLLABORATORS DISCUSS THE CHALLENGES AND REWARDS OF SHOOTING IN ALASKA’S EXTREME WEATHER. BY MATT GROBAR
encounter an entirely different and equally daunting challenge: “I have never felt more insane in my life than having 300 to 400 mosquitoes on me at any given time,” Diack says. “It makes me crazy.” Not to mention the regular appearance of grizzly bears, and plenty of nerve-wracking journeys in small, fixed-wing aircraft. Through all this, the collaborators find solace in each other. “I firmly believe that without John on the first leg, I would’ve died in the cold,” Diack admits. What keeps Griber and Diack going is the sheer thrill of it all, and thus far they remain unscathed by their adventures. “Where else am I going to learn how to do all these amazing things?” she says. “Go dog mushing, ride along the Yukon River on a snow machine, and go on a caribou hunt?” “You’re in the freakin’ Arctic, you know?” Griber adds. “The amount of people that get to see this…It’s a great experience.” ★
COLD COMFORT Diack and Griber use dog-mushing, kayaking and igloo-building skills to shoot during mosquito-filled summers and 40-below winters.
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FROM SIEGE TO SCREEN AUTHOR MARTHA RADDATZ, REAL-LIFE SOLDIER ERIC BOURQUIN, AND STAR MICHAEL KELLY ON TELLING THE TRUE STORY OF AN AMERICAN PLATOON AMBUSHED IN IRAQ IN THE LONG ROAD HOME. BY ANTONIA BLYTH
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ringing Martha Raddatz’s bestselling book The Long Road Home to television was no simple task. In recreating the real and harrowing events of ‘Black Sunday’, – the 2004 horrific ambush of American troops in Sadr City, Iraq – it was always essential to stay true to the facts, and to honor the service and sacrifice of the soldiers and their families. “It’s been almost 10 years since I wrote the book,” Raddatz says. “During all that time I’ve been working with (executive producer) Mike Medavoy and Mikko Alanne, who is just a really, really phenomenal screenwriter. We have this great relationship, and we all care so deeply about not just the story, but the people in it. Mikko had met them all, and I consolidated all those intros, and he cared as much about it as I did.” Playing Lieutenant Colonel Gary Volesky, Michael Kelly felt a powerful responsibility to do justice to the man who worked so valiantly to save his platoon. “I did it with a very serious face,” Kelly says. “The sacrifices this man makes for us, for all of us to enjoy the freedom we enjoy in our country. This guy in particular, there was something about him that I was just so drawn to. He was willing to do anything. All he cares about is the wellbeing of his men, and doing the best job that he can do.”
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In fact, Kelly had the chance to meet Volesky in person. “I was like, ‘Oh I get it.’ He looked me in the eye, he put his hand on my shoulder. He is just such a beautiful, beautiful person, but one you would never want to mess with, you know?” For Eric Bourquin, a soldier who was part of the original platoon, being a consultant on the project and revisiting the events he saw as a 23 year-old sergeant brought some mixed feelings. The set in Texas that realistically recreated Sadr City proved especially strange. “Initially it was pretty tough,” he says. “It was very emotional, it was very mental, and it took a lot out of me. As it progressed, being able to share all of that with my friends who were able to come back to their version of the battlefield too, and be in a safe environment, it gave me a lot of joy, and it gave me a lot of peace.” Played by Jon Beavers in the series, Bourquin was a consultant on the project and a key part of the enormous effort the production made to stay true to real events. “I was helping to prep equipment and uniforms,” he says, “helping the actors train as they were learning weapons techniques and how to move through the streets. I wanted to make sure that everybody was identifiable and that everything was as realistic as possible.” ★
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REVISITING HISTORY Clockwise, from top: Kelly on set as Volesky; a Sadr City scene recreated, Raddatz (left), and Bourquin. D E A D L I N E .C O M / AWA R D S L I N E
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DESERT STORM Patrolling the streets of the set built on a U.S. Army training site.
REBUILDING THE BATTLE THE LONG ROAD HOME PRODUCTION DESIGNER SETH REED ON RECREATING IRAQ’S SADR CITY STATESIDE. BY MATT GROBAR What kind of research did you do going into this project? I’d worked on Valkyrie, for which we did some massive sets in and around Los Angeles. For The Long Road Home, the sets were even more massive, but I was lucky that I had not only all the normal resources, but also access to interviews that [author] Martha Raddatz had done with the soldiers that were involved. I got to talk to some of the soldiers directly, and see videos of some of them. Another thing was, there were photojournalists that were embedded with the soldiers, and it was the first time that this sort of thing happened. It was the dawn of the small digital camera era. So I not only got photographs from the soldiers, but also these amazing photographs from some of the photojournalists.
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The Long Road Home was the largest operating set in North America. What did building it entail? We had a great relationship with the U.S. Army. They offered us one of their training sites where they teach soldiers how to fight, so we had a place that we could build onto, and we had real, modern U.S. Army equipment. It was a massive building project. We built 85 buildings, and had three separate neighborhoods, or looks, that we designed. We also modified the existing training village. So we really affected 113 buildings, between building and remodeling, on a 12-acre site. We had three-fifths of a mile of street where we could drive Humvees and tanks. Since many aspects of the show involved soldiers driving in their convoys and being shot at, we needed a lot of space to drive. ★
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FAMOUS FRIENDS DeGrasse Tyson routinely discusses life’s big questions with household names. Clockwise from top right: at home with Katy Perry; Whoopi Goldberg; William Shatner, and Stephen Hawking .
KEEP LOOKING U StarTalk began as a radio show, so how did it end up on television? National Geographic said, “We want to do some more TV with you, here are some ideas.” This was after Cosmos in 2014. And I said, “I’m not really interested in more TV, but I am doing this radio show, so you could film the radio show.” Then they said, “We’ll invest more than that in this,” and indeed, of the 50 shows that we created, 20 of them this season were done specially for National Geographic in the hall of the universe at the museum where I work, the American Museum of Natural History. Who have been some of your favorite guests? We’re in our fourth year, so I have several, one of
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whom, curiously enough, was one of the founders of Twitter: Biz Stone. I like learning in my conversations, and I’ve learned a lot about human nature, about what drives us, what brings us together; and all of this from a conversation with a guy who barely went to college. He had a vision about how people would communicate, enacted this vision, and that then morphs into Twitter. Also, William Shatner, from the original Star Trek. He had some fun, interesting things to say. I enjoyed my conversation with Katy Perry. It was at her place in Los Angeles. Just to see how the mind works of someone who is the largest pop star in the world—that was just illuminating for me. She has retained curiosity into adulthood and she was another one who never went to
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THE ASTROPHYSICIST, AUTHOR AND HOST DISCUSSES HOW HIS NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SHOW STARTALK WITH NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON EXPERTLY CLOSES THE GAP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND POPULAR CULTURE. BY ANTONIA BLYTH
college. So many of these people, who are singularly influential and talented, never went to college. And here I am, a fully-pedigreed academic, so it’s fascinating to me to see people who have made a mark in society, without reference to formal training that we’ve all told ourselves is a prerequisite to having made a mark in society. I was also thrilled to have one of the last interviews with Stephen Hawking before his recent passing. What are the most common questions you’re asked? With Katy Perry, half of the conversation was her asking me questions, as just a manifestation of her curiosity. We always make sure that’s a part of the interview, because a person doesn’t spend much, if any, time
ever in their lives in the company of an astrophysicist. Usually people have some question they were harboring, like, “What happens if we meet aliens?”, “Is Pluto a planet?”, “What was around before the Big Bang?”, “Could we travel at the speed of light?”. Or you can get a philosophical, spiritual question. What’s some of the best feedback you’ve had from viewers in terms of igniting their interest in science? Some of the feedback we’ve gotten is, “I never knew I could like science as much as I did.” I always have a comedic co-host that adds a measure of levity to the conversation. So I have the academic gravity, and the comedic brevity, and I control those knobs as the show unfolds. ★ D E A D L I N E .C O M / AWA R D S L I N E
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WHAT ON EARTH EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS DARREN ARONOFSKY AND JANE ROOT ON THEIR CINEMATIC RETELLING OF OUR HOME PLANET’S STORY IN ONE STRANGE ROCK. BY ANTONIA BLYTH Using eight astronauts’ viewpoints as a framework is so different–how did you decide on that? Jane Root: The astronauts have this amazing perspective, they call it the overview effect, which is when you can see the whole of the Earth at one time, it makes you feel appreciative of the wonders of the Earth and very protective of it. Darren Aronofsky: We were trying to figure out who on the planet actually could be true experts of the planet, and then had the idea that it’s actually the people who left the Earth and were able to look back down. Most people think of astronauts as looking up, but most of the
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time, if not all the time, they’re looking down, back at the Earth. How did you retain this incredible cinematography across an enormous project with several camera crews? Darren Aronofsky: When you send six different crews to different places on the planet, you can end up with a whole lot of footage that isn’t connected. I was trying to push the crews to try to limit what type of shots they could do. So I came up with a rule book of how to use a drone, how to use the camera, what lenses to use, how to follow a character. All the different type of shots are actually repeated
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LIFE ON MARS A crew explores barren terrain and Aronofsky (bottom left) speaks on a panel with some of the featured astronauts.
throughout all 10 hours so that hopefully, it could all work together and then make a more convincing portrait of the Earth. How did you approach blending the visual effects with nature? Darren Aronofsky: We tried to make the visual effects really connected to all the other footage, and exciting and cinematic. I mean, that was a big part of why National Geographic brought me in—to make it feel more like a movie. I think trying to do things differently than what you normally see on TV, and just expand the palette of what’s possible was some of the stuff we were striving for. Jane Root: In that first show you saw a shot of oxygen bubbles when we’re talking about how oxygen is formed. No one had ever filmed that before. It happens really fast. We
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managed to get that shot working with the macro cameras, and by getting snails to walk on the rock so their slime just holds the air bubbles for that nanosecond, and allows you to get the shot. Just that one shot took days to effect. The soundtrack is a big part of the experience of watching this. Jane Root: Daniel Pemberton did the score. I think he’s really, really creative in terms of how he had to think. Darren really pushed us to find music of the caliber that would work with the show, and we’re really happy with what we ended up with. Darren Aronofsky: I love the work that he did. It was original and it was bold. I think he was great in matching the concepts that were being presented. They’re big ideas. ★
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