Jason Bell on Shooting Stars for Vanity Fair

Earlier today we showcased three new short films which have been shot by renowned photographer and filmmaker Jason Bell for Vanity Fair's new Hollywood issue [films which you can view again above, and below].

But further to that, we grabbed some time with Bell [pictured below] to discuss the project, how it came about and the logistics of gathering 40 of the UK's most well respected and recognised actors and actresses for the campaign.

How did the project come about?

JB: I would say that my photographic work is quite narrative, so it isn’t - or doesn’t feel - a particularly huge leap for me to make film. I’ve quite often received comments from people that my photographs look like stills from a film that they haven’t seen yet, and then you sort of script it together and you think I can shoot it.

So, in more specific terms, I noticed that British actors were getting all these extraordinary roles, but the ones that I really clocked were things like Batman [Christian Bale], Spider-man [Andrew Garfield] and Superman [Henry Cavill] were all being played by Brits at one point, and then Daniel Day Lewis plays Abraham Lincoln [Lincoln], and it was just like all the American cultural icons are being played by Brits.

So I said to Vanity Fair, why don’t you do a portfolio of British actors and they said yes, fine. And then I kind of jokingly said it’s got out of hand, you could make the whole Hollywood portfolio British actors, but I never thought they would actually do that. And then, much to my pleasant surprise, they turned around and said yes, that’s great, let’s make that the Hollywood portfolio and you shoot it all.

And then I suggested they should do a film to go with it. They’d done those pretty predictable behind the scenes things before, which all photographers tend to do, and I was very clear when I started to do motion stuff that I didn’t really have any interest in that. I don’t have anything against that behind the scenes stuff and people love seeing it, but I wasn’t interested in that.

Again, I think because of the sort of narrative I do [in my photography], I didn’t feel as stressed, about making a really good pop-up film of my original, but it was the most amazing opportunity. If you look at the actors that I had, 40 of the world’s greatest actors, and I’ve got to do something with them, but the real thing was getting the idea and then commissioning the script.

Who did you collaborate with on the script? 

JB: Two key people; one is a man named Guy Harrington, he's my agent, along with Kate Holmes at Soho Management, and really he came up with the original idea of the Pathe news reel. And then the other is someone I’ve known a long time called Harry Oulton. He worked at the BBC and was a script editor and writer and I gave him the idea and I said this is how I can see it going and I know it needs to be like this.

And then Vanity Fair said we’d like it to be episodic, because they said, and I think they were right, people won’t sit and watch a 10-minute film, they’ll watch episodes, so we want it broken in to smaller chunks, which made sense. And that fitted with the Pathe news reel idea very well.

So then Harry wrote the script and we, of course, went through revisions of it and some of the actors changed their lines. Sometimes I would offer someone several lines that I’d say these are the three or four things I thought of for you and they would pick a favourite. Dominic West was really brilliant, and his idea to cry at the bar a little bit was very funny.

Then we had all these great lines and it became increasingly clear that to really make it properly narrative, you needed a narrator, and that fits back to the Pathe new reel idea. We had lots of conversations about who would be right for that and I really liked the idea of it being someone well known but you didn’t realise who it was until the very end. And then James [Corden] really runs with it and starts doing a whole moan about being fed up.

Was Vanity Fair worried about the ambitious nature of getting all of these celebrities to agree?

JB: Yes. You know we were asking some very big stars to do a lot, and it was probably, perhaps, confidence on my part that I’ve shot lots of these people before, I know a few of them, I reckoned once we’d got one or two to agree, we’d be off. The tipping point was getting Keira Knightly to do that When Harry Met Sally scene, and Judi Dench was brilliant and immediately asked to do the, “I’ll have what she’s having” scene.

And once we got that, it was such an easy sell. You only have to say to Kenneth Branagh, I’ve got Keira and Judi, and he’s bursting out laughing at what was said. I was a bit nervous about giving him his lines as I thought he might say, look I’m a serious, straight actor, take me seriously, but he read it and he was like oh, that’s very funny.

The absolute delight about directing this is working with those actors. When you give them the lines and you say ‘this is how I’m thinking it’, and they give it back to you better than how you imagined it. That is a brilliant actor in action.

And James Corden, absolutely came up trumps. I said to him to feel free to re-write any of these lines that he was not comfortable with, because he’s not just an actor, he’s also a big comedy writer, so it was like help me out here.

Originally I had him saying all the things he didn’t like about Britain and the line was going to be something like “you know, no wonder they all end up over here”. And he said he didn’t really want to say that, because all his friends are British and they’d wonder why he was slagging of England, and he loves England. In the end we talked about the Superman, Batman and Spider-man thing we discussed earlier and he was like, well, there it is, that’s how we do it. 

What was the hardest part about putting the project together?

JB: The hardest thing about it is that every person that you shoot, you’re sort of begging, you’re starting on the back foot of begging them to do something at the end of a photo shoot, and I knew I would never get any of them back to do it, because they don’t want to then give you half a day to do hair, make-up and styling all over again.

But off the back of a photo shoot I was doing with them, they’ve already had their hair done and their make-up and they’re dressed, and it’s literally like ‘can you stay ten minutes and do this?’ It’s easy for them to do. The only specifically scheduled bit is the bit with James Corden at the end, that’s a special shoot.

Was it very hard to get everybody on board with the project?

JB: No. Because like I said, once Keira was, quite early on, on board, and then Judi Dench, I found all the actors were like yes, sure, I’m up for it. You have to remember that actors like acting. My theory, as a photographer, is that being photographed is quite boring, so I try to make the shoot fun. And these are people who, after all, are pretty familiar with the process of filmmaking.

What was the most enjoyable part of the process?

JB: The bit I really enjoyed was just watching good actors act well and making something more of the line than I had anticipated. You know it’s going to be funny, Keira faking an orgasm, but she looked at me and she said “look, I’m only going to do this once, you’ve got to do it in one take, but I am really going to go for it, are you ready?”

And it was one of those spine-tingling moments hearing her really going to go for it. And you just think, oh my god, and we are all just standing there, thinking please don’t need to do it a second time, let’s do it in one. And she just got on with it.

Do you consider yourself a photographer and a director; do you prefer one over the other?

JB: I consider myself a photographer and I don’t think I’ve earned the right yet to call myself a director. I’ve done small bits of film which have worked, and which I’m proud of, but I can’t say hey, I’ve done a feature film. I don’t imagine I’d ever give up taking photographs, because I love it and it’s really in my DNA, but I have to say that the directing is something I’m enjoying more and more and it will be interesting to see what I’m offered. And I think if someone offered me something amazing, I’m sure I’d say yes.

I’m surprised how much I actually find it [directing] a bit like my job already. I’m quite a narrative photographer and it’s about telling stories. The pictures of mine that I like the best are the ones that tell stories. So you’re telling stories by moving images rather than still images, but the creative drive feels the same. I have been pleasantly surprised that I haven’t found it harder.