Scorsese's The Irishman

[Pennywise]

 

[Pennywise]

Despite Ongoing Peace Talks, Netflix Won’t Have Any Movies at Cannes 2019 (EXCLUSIVE)

To avoid missing out on another masterwork like “Roma,” Fremaux has been eager to lay his hands on Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” and made that clear at the Lumière Festival in Lyon, France, last October, where he sat with Sarandos, Stuber, and Cannes president Pierre Lescure. Fremaux then traveled to the Marrakech Film Festival, where Scorsese was being honored in December.

At the time, there was a strong possibility that post-production on “The Irishman” would be done by May, but the laborious special effects have meant that the film will not be ready for Cannes and will likely bow at the Venice Film Festival in September, before rolling out in theaters and on the streaming service in the fall.

 

[terry78]

Part of that is Marty's perfectionism the other is they wanna make sure that CG is 100.

Actually that's probably both the same thing.

 

[Pennywise]

New interview with De Niro where he talks about the De-Aging process and how it’s different from his previous experience with Grudge Match.

‘Joker’: Robert De Niro Addresses the Connection Between His Character and ‘King of Comedy’

De Niro has been revisiting his past in other ways lately, by acting in Martin Scorsese’s Netflix-produced “The Irishman,” which comes out this fall and will be the subject of a conversation between De Niro and Scorsese during the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. In the movie, De Niro stars as hit man and union leader Frank Sheeran, and his character — along with those played by Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, and others — age across several decades. Scorsese has repeatedly employed pricey VFX to de-age his cast. “They’re trying to really make it the best it’s ever been,” De Niro said. “What I’ve seen looks really good.”

De Niro has some prior experience with de-aging in the 2013 boxing movie “Grudge Match,” but the technology was less sophisticated and required the actors to wear intrusive head gear for the CGI to work. “When I did it in ‘Grudge Match,’ we had more obstructive things on,” De Niro said. “Marty was concerned, rightly so, that we should not have things on us that would be distracting. We had some dots, some reflective things, all subtle stuff.”

De Niro’s producing partner and Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal noted that the camera technology did lend a different challenge to the set. “They did have this three-headed monster of a camera that was around all the time,” she said. “They had hair and costumes of the period, but they didn’t have to worry about anything else that was intrusive. So the goal here was that it was a more intuitive way of working for an actor.”

Coming on the heels of Samuel L. Jackson’s de-aging in “Captain Marvel,” De Niro said his experience on “The Irishman” has lead him to think about new opportunities afforded by the technology. “If it’s going to extend my career by 30 years, that’s fine with me,” he said.

 

[Pennywise]

Meet Martin Scorsese's Secret Weapon in New York: "It's Emma's City. She Knows Everybody"

Koskoff has been shooting in New York for the better part of 20 years. Projects with Scorsese include The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street and his two HBO series, Vinyl and Boardwalk Empire. The 108-day Irishman shoot drew on all of her skills, not to mention her deep New York Rolodex.

Based on the 2004 Charles Brandt book I Heard You Paint Houses, The Irishman stars De Niro as Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran, a labor union official who says he was involved in the murder of Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). Shot between September 2017 and March 2018, The Irishmanfeatures 117 locations and 319 scenes, including one that was filmed at the Bronx courthouse amid the dumping snow and freezing temperatures of a bomb cyclone; it shot in all four other boroughs, plus Westchester and Rockland counties. Because the film covers a five-decade period (from the 1950s through the early 2000s), Scorsese is digitally de-aging much of his principal cast, which meant that the crew often was shooting with a bulky, ILM-designed rig nicknamed the "three-headed monster." Koskoff estimates the movie was shot 70 percent digitally, and 30 percent on film for scenes where de-aging isn't necessary. She declines to disclose the budget for the film, which is believed to be Scorsese's most expensive at well over $140 million, with a 30 percent tax incentive for shooting in New York.

“Trust is what you need to have with your producer," Scorsese says. "Emma tackles tough problems with me on and off-set. We've made films all around the world together — from London to Taipei and Boston to New York. New York is an especially complicated place to shoot, and The Irishman, with its many locations, large cast and VFX, was particularly complex. But Emma had control over all the complexities of the day-to-day physical production. This let me focus on my work with the actors and the rest of my team."

New York primarily doubles for Philadelphia in the film, with the historic row house neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens, supplying many key locations, including the Friendly Lounge (a Philadelphia bar where the characters hang out), a church and a Catholic school. The Irishman crew also built sets inside the Marcy Avenue Armory in Brooklyn — including the homes of De Niro's and Pacino's characters — and at the Kaufman Astoria studios in Queens; road-trip scenes were shot on a stretch of highway on Staten Island.

 

[Hurm...]

Interesting that so much of it was shot on digital. I wonder if the differing formats will be noticeable on-screen.

 

[Pennywise]

Interesting that so much of it was shot on digital. I wonder if the differing formats will be noticeable on-screen.

Was wondering that too!

 

[Hurm...]

Steve McQueen's Widows was shot on digital (a first for McQueen), and I thought that looked flawless and very similar to the film format. I think it's much easier to emulate the format now than ever before -- especially if the DOP is much more prone to using film for their pictures.

 

[Kane52630]

He used an Arricam for Widows.

 

[Pennywise]

Steve McQueen's Widows was shot on digital (a first for McQueen), and I thought that looked flawless and very similar to the film format. I think it's much easier to emulate the format now than ever before -- especially if the DOP is much more prone to using film for their pictures.

Really? I couldn't tell!

 

[Hurm...]

He used an Arricam for Widows.

So it was done on film after all? I read an interview years ago with McQueen in a magazine (I think it's called Fantastic Man), where he mentioned that they were going digital for Widows, because of scheduling purposes (they would need to ship the film daily from Chicago to California for some reason -- for processing, I guess?). But maybe that all changed by the time they started filming.

 

[Kane52630]

Probably... but IMDB and Indiewire both mentioned McQueen used 35 mm film.


edit:

found a bts photo

 

[Pennywise]

Tribeca Film Festival Co-Founder on the Rise of Netflix and Her Work With Scorsese

Netflix doesn’t have traditional theatrical releases. What will happen with “The Irishman”?

There will be some sort of theatrical component. You have to have that. It’s a different experience than watching it at home. In a theater, you may start to laugh at something because the people next to you are laughing — and “The Irishman” is very funny, much like “Goodfellas” was funny. Marty is genius in the way his shots move. You see them differently on a big screen. I watched “Roma” in a theater, and the clarity of the black and white on a big screen was so beautiful. You miss that when you watch it at home on your computer. But at the same time you have a situation where audiences have more power than ever before over how they want to watch something.

 

[terry78]

That is probably one of the better rationalizations for watching in a theatre as opposed to home I've read.

 

[Pennywise]

Robert De Niro on Making 'The Irishman' With Martin Scorsese: "It’s Been a Long Time Coming"

At this year's Tribeca Film Festival, co-founder Robert De Niro will sit down with director and longtime friend Martin Scorsese for a talk about their many film collaborations over the years. According to De Niro, his chat with Scorsese will likely include details about their upcoming movie, The Irishman, their ninth joint effort overall.

In a recent Hollywood Reporter In Studio interview, De Niro opened up about adapting the story — based off of Charles Brandt's 2003 book I Heard You Paint Houses — for the screen.

"It's a terrific book…I read it and I said, 'Marty, you should read this book because I think maybe this is what we should try and [do],'" said the actor, later adding that it's taken 12 years to get the project off the ground. "We started this whole process in 2007, so it's been a long time coming. I'm excited to see it and to share it after all this time working on it."

The Irishman is a biographical film starring De Niro as Frank Sheeran, a labor union leader and alleged hitman for the Bufalino crime family, and Al Pacino as union activist Jimmy Hoffa. Joe Pesci, Anna Paquin, Bobby Cannavale, Ray Romano and Harvey Keitel round out the star-studded cast. Filming began in New York in September 2017 and wrapped in March 2018. The film is set to have a theatrical release, followed by digital streaming, in late 2019, by Netflix.

Jane Rosenthal, De Niro's Tribeca co-founder, served as a producer on the film. Like the Oscar winner, Rosenthal is also looking forward to seeing the final product. "It was 2007, so we've been working on this [for a while]," she told THR, noting that screenwriter Steven Zaillian delivered a script very quickly. But still, as Rosenthal said, "It took us a long time to get it made through so many different iterations."

Though The Irishman has yet to receive a premiere date, both De Niro and Rosenthal have seen a few scenes from the film — including moments featuring a "younger, de-aged" version of 75-year-old De Niro, assisted by CGI. Special effects are being employed to shave years off the star as the movie covers a wide span of his character's life.

"I think it's great. I've seen some of it. I'm going to see some of it more, actually today or tomorrow, but it's great. They're really doing a terrific job," he enthused. "I'm anxious to see the whole thing put together."

Added Rosenthal: "It's pretty emotional when you see it."

Along with De Niro and Scorsese's chat — part of the Tribeca Talks: Directors Series — the 18th edition of the annual downtown Manhattan film fest will feature a string of music-related film premieres, including opening night doc The Apollo and Danny Boyle's Beatles-inspired comedy Yesterday, which will close the two-week event.

 

[Pennywise]

New interview with Scoresese on the issues with the de-aging technology.

Martin Scorsese is Obsessing Over the "Youthification" CGI in 'The Irishman'

Filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Joanna Hogg recently interviewed each other on the A24 Podcast, and the results are a must-listen. Scorsese and Hogg talk about their work, with Hogg there to delve into her new A24 movie The Souvenir and the process of filmmaking in general. During the conversation, Scorsese brings up the technical difficulties he’s experiencing while cutting together The Irishman, his upcoming Netflix crime film that stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel.

“There’s a great deal of CGI because we’re doing this ‘youthification’ of De Niro, Pesci and Al Pacino, and so they had to be CGI,” Scorsese says. “There had to be a camera with three lenses and [it] was just crazy.”


Scorsese is hellbent on making this “youthification” look right – a process that sounds like it’s driving him a little nuts. “What I’m concerned about…what we’re all concerned about, is that we’re so used to watching them [with] the older faces,” he says. “When we put them all together and there are cuts back and forth…now I’m seeing [that] certain shots need more work on the eyes…the wrinkles and things have changed. So it’s changed the eyes. If that’s the case, then [what] was in the eyes that I liked? Was an intensity, was a gravitas. Was it threat…I don’t know.”

 

[terry78]

Perfectionist for life.

 

[Pennywise]

Hopefully, it all works out!

 

[Hurm...]

It sounds so damn challenging to get right. Surprisingly, the Marvel films have really nailed it with some of their movies. But to have a full film with a "youthified" actor must be so difficult. I like that Scorsese is challenging himself, even after all these years. I can't say the same for many other directors who have been in the business for even half the time he has.

Really want a trailer.

 

[Pennywise]

Part of me wonders if Scoresese will have the film pushed back to 2020 if he doesn't feel satisfied with the de-aging. Who knows, though? Maybe it'll be ready on time for the fall!

 

[terry78]

t's easy for us that weren't even born or were just little kids back then to say the de-aging looks fine but Scorsese was around and saw these guys back in their prime and worked with them in person so he would know.

 

[Schlosser85]

Young Pacino with old Pacino’s raspy voice will still be weird. He doesn’t sound like the same person.

 

[Pennywise]

t's easy for us that weren't even born or were just little kids back then to say the de-aging looks fine but Scorsese was around and saw these guys back in their prime and worked with them in person so he would know.

This is true!

 

[KillerMcQueen]

This movie could be perfect in pretty much every way, but if the de-aging isn't spot on it will all fall apart, getting it right has to be hugely stressful for Scorsese and the Vfx teams, as well as the actors. These actors don't look, talk, or move the way they did when they were younger and trying to get around that could very well be impossible no matter how hard they work to overcome it.

 

[Pennywise]

‘The Irishman’: Al Pacino on Playing A 39-Year-Old Mobster

“We went through all these tests and things,” he continued. To achieve the most authentic performance possible, members of the crew would tip off the Best Actor Oscar winner (“Scent of a Woman”) as to how old Hoffa was in each scene. “Someone would come up to me and say, ‘You’re 39.’ [You’d recall] some sort of memory of 39, and your body tries to acclimate to that and think that way. They remind you of it.”

Robert De Niro Is Always Doing Something

You play the character over many decades. Was that a challenge to play a younger person? Did that involve some physical transformation?

Some, yeah. We had someone who was always on the set keeping an eye on posture and stuff. Going up and down the stairs and things. You forget as you get older that certain things are not the way you did them twenty, thirty years ago. So those kinds of things I was always trying to be aware of. Because they would make you younger technologically with, whatever, C.G.I. and all that stuff. But you still had to have the physical movements that were closer to the age.

They’re using V.D.X. to age you and Pacino backward. Have you seen the results of that?

I saw a little of the test. They look pretty good, from what I saw. I joke that it’ll extend my career.

It seems like you’ve gotten so much out of physical transformation in the past. Is there something that’s lost by not having to put latex on?

No, we still have that—the older stuff, especially, there’s makeup. I don’t know how to act younger, other than physically. Older is easier. You can put makeup on.

Yeah, I can imagine capturing the movements and mannerisms of their younger selves was very difficult! And of course, the VFX capturing the look as well.