Sam Mendes
“It’s the ideal of the movie at your fingertips.”
Having first made a major reputation in English theatre, Sam Mendes got the chance to direct his first feature, American Beauty (1999). The movie earned five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director for Mendes, an unusual accomplishment for a first time film director.
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Mendes first used PIX Project on Jarhead. “[Before] I had been very rigidly storyboarding my movies, and working in a very economical way in terms of camera. On Jarhead I was working more handheld, shifting things around between takes, and asking the actors not to bother with continuity — trusting something was going to come out of the mix.”
“With Walter’s cut coming back about a week later, clearly working in my opinion, PIX totally changed the way I was going to shoot the rest of the film in certain areas. It convinced me it was going to work. I adjusted my working method.”
“It’s the ideal as dreamt up by Francis Coppola all those years ago sitting in his Silverfish trailer. It’s the ideal of the movie at your fingertips… an opportunity for the movie to talk back to you before you get into the editing room… that’s what I loved about it.”