(applause)

(upbeat music)

Hello, my name is Jeff Nichols, I'm a filmmaker.

I have made three movies that have been released,

and I'm currently working on my fourth.

I've been really lucky that each film that I've made has

gotten a larger and larger budget

and kind of despite that,

I've been able to maintain some creative control.

I write each of my films,

I direct each of my films,

and I have final cut over their edits.

So if you've happened to actually see one of my movies,

and you don't like it, it is totally my fault.

There's no one else to blame.

The good thing about that is,

over the course of three films,

I've actually been able to develop

a point of view as a filmmaker.

It doesn't always happen in this business.

But because of that control,

I've been able to think about my films,

and put something very personal into each of them.

In my first film, Shotgun Stories,

I actually didn't know what I was doing,

when I started it.

It wasn't until after the film was finished,

and I read one of the first reviews,

that I realized I had a point of view.

There was this review that came out that said,

both the camera and the characters were languid,

which is a really fancy way of saying

the movie is really slow.

The funny thing is when I read it, I agreed.

And I actually thought I meant to do it,

I just had never been forced to enunciate it before.

I'd financed that film with friends' and family's money,

and nobody asked me why I was doing it,

I was just doing it.

My first film, Shotgun Stories,

follows a feud between two sets of half brothers

and the violence escalates.

It essentially is a revenge narrative.

Revenge narratives, typically westerns, action movies,

follows a good guy whose buddy gets killed or something,

then he chases him and then eventually shoots him,

or drops him off a building,

and as an audience we feel really good,

because the bad guy got what he deserved.

But I wanted to subvert that.

I wanted to subvert that idea,

even though I didn't really know I was doing it.

The first thing to do was to make a film

that was very still, very quiet.

Also, that's because I choose to follow

the lower class set of brothers.

Typically these guys would be the bad guys in the movie,

but I wanted to figure out what they were about

and humanize them.

The thing about them is they're not upwardly mobiles guys,

they're like these white trash, redneck guys

in Southeast Arkansas.

They weren't making progress in their lives.

If anything, through their actions in the film,

they were hurting themselves.

As a result, I thought about the camera and

I thought that it should just be still.

They aren't moving, so we aren't moving.

Oddly enough, there's a tension in the film

that ratchets up and the camera still doesn't move.

It's almost oppressive,

the way that you have to watch it.

I want to show you this clip.

A little bit of context,

this scene follows two of our main characters

after they find out that their younger brother

has been killed,

and they're standing outside the hospital.

They mention a character's name,

and that happens to be the younger brother's fiance.

(crickets chirping)

I gotta get back inside,

talk to this person.

Okay.

Would you go by Annie's mom, let her know?

Yeah, I will.

Somebody's going to have to tell Cheryl.

Hey.

I'll see you at home.

That was two shots.

It was a wide shot, and it was a close-up.

A close-up racking shot, so one character is the foreground,

one character is in the background.

90% of directors, myself included,

when that character turns to look at the other one,

you would rack focus, you would go to him.

I didn't.

I didn't really know why on set, I didn't,

I just thought it was cool.

But when you start to think about it,

you realize that it forces you to stay with

that other character.

It forces you to think about him.

It's his point of view,

and he's trying to take control of situation

he has no control over.

Then, that starts to bring up this idea

that this bigger point of view that you're trying to make

as a filmmaker,

this idea, this theme,

it's all supported by this disparate collection of shots.

That's all you really have to work with.

I promised myself going into my next film,

that before I started, I would enunciate this point of view.

I would try and support it through these shots.

As a filmmaker,

you really only have three things to work with.

You have camera placement,

but what we don't always realize is on set,

a filmmaker has a 360 degree view to choose from.

Do I put the camera up high, down low, far away, close up.

Next, you have to choose the lens,

wide lens, long lens.

Long lens was the second shot.

Then there's movement,

and there are different types of movement.

One, in this, there's no movement.

There's dolly, which is a track

that keeps the frame locked.

There's steady cam movement,

which is a gyroscopic device that hangs off

the person that wears it

and it moves in a very elegant, smooth way.

Then there's handheld movement,

which is what you see in Jason Bourne movies.

All these things add up together to mean something,

and to mean a point a view.

Usually it's a character point of view,

but even when you have all these shots

that are a character's point of view,

they have to add up to something.

They have to mean something.

For my second film, it's called Take Shelter.

I wrote it in 2008,

the economy was collapsing,

the environment was going crazy

and my wife was pregnant.

I was very nervous, I was very anxious,

and I wanted to make a movie about that.

So, I designed a film that followed a man

who began to have visions of a giant,

supernatural storm.

He didn't know if these were visions of the future,

or if they were symptoms of a mental illness

that had been running in his family.

I was trying to think visually

how I was going to show this anxiety.

I was sitting on my couch one night,

and I was watching The Shining by Kubrick,

and there's this shot of Jack Nicholson

and he's typing at a keyboard.

The camera's behind him, and it's a wide shot,

and it's just slowly moving in on him.

I thought, Now, Kubrick's moving the camera,

why is he moving the camera?

Whenever you move the camera it means something,

it means point of view.

But whose point of view is that,

there's no one else in the room.

But it's Kubrick, I know there has to be one.

Then I realized, there is one.

It's actually the point of view

of the Overlook Hotel, if you've seen the film.

The entire hotel is haunted,

there is a spirit that is working its way

into Nicholson's brain.

That's what the camera was doing.

I was like, Oh, that's really smart.

I'm going to rip that off.

So, I designed an entire film around

slow, creeping dolly shots.

Watch this, this is me ripping off Kubrick.

(eerie music)

We mixed that film here at Skywalker,

and the first time I ever got to see it finished

was in this room and they were right,

it never sounds as good once you leave.

So, my third film is a film called Mud.

It follows two 14 year old boys

who discover a man hiding out on an island

in the middle of the Mississippi River.

I knew I wanted to make a film about unrequited love,

and I knew I wanted it all to be from the perspective

or point of view of a 14 year old boy.

So, again, I started thinking about things.

My first film was totally still, stagnant.

My second film had this very, very metered movement.

I felt like I hadn't conquered movement yet,

and I thought this was the perfect subject for it.

One, you have a boy,

who is constantly in motion, constantly moving.

Also, you have a film set on the river,

the Mississippi River.

It moves about two to three miles per hour,

it's the most winding river in the world,

very much like the story.

I wanted the camera to move,

very much like that river, very much like this boy.

I wanted there to be an elegance to it,

and the right tool for that is the steady cam.

I actually think the steady cam is the closest we come

to mimicking human movement.

The way our eyes work in our heads,

it's actually like a natural gyroscope.

So, I designed an entire movie around

this kind of movement.

(suspenseful music)

What are you doing?

I saw that same boot print up in the tree.

It's got a cross in the heel.

Somebody's been in our boat.

Shit. Let's go.

We've got to go if you want to make it back.

Takes twice as long going up river.

Hold on.

Up there, they stop.

Where the hell'd it go?

I don't know.

Shit. You know that guy?

I've never seen him before.

Shit.

(laughter)

So, you can see in that clip,

just like the one from Take Shelter,

not every shot moves, like I say.

It's a combination of things.

It's like a tool kit, as a director,

I've started to build on.

There are still shots,

there are wide shots,

but then certain ones move.

So, kind of the older I've gotten,

and the move that I've done this,

I start to feel like I'm finally getting prepared

to make a movie.

This last thing that I have for you

is the new film that I'm working on.

It's with Warner Brothers and they're really nice

to let me show it to you.

I thought it kind of made this point,

which is, you'll see examples of each type

of shot that I've kind of shown you here.

Some shots will be still,

some shots will be steady cam,

there is actually a dolly shot in there, if you can tell.

But, there's a new challenge.

Each of my first three films,

we shot the majority of things outside,

during the day.

I shoot on film, I don't shoot video,

and it's really conducive to being outside during the day.

But we don't light anything,

it just looks really pretty with the sunlight.

I felt like I had never conquered light,

and that was my challenge for this film.

There's a little bit of it that you can see here.

This is a film called Midnight Special,

and it doesn't need much description,

but I'm going to leave you with that.

Thanks.

(suspenseful music)

[Woman] Are you okay?

We'll be there soon.

Why are you wearing those goggles?

Stop!

Stop!

He's with me, he's my son.

Yeah, well you oughta watch your kid.

Yeah, I got it. Thank you.

Everything okay?

You cannot leave the van.

You hear me?

I'm sorry.

It's okay, I shouldn't have left you.

No.

I'm sorry.

(suspenseful music)

Roy?

(upbeat music)

(applause)