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Cinematography Portfolio

The Greatest Showman, released on December 20th, 2017 was one of

my favorite movies of the year. Presented as a musical, it involved singing and dancing, as well as acting. Due to these extra levels of performance, it required much more rehearsal, training and pre production!

To produce this movie, actors had to go through 10 weeks of

rehearsals and training to be able to perform their stunts, to know the dances to all the songs, and to be able to sing the songs while doing stunts and dancing. Even with all the rehearsals, there were probably still times which the actors messed up on choreogreophy, and the scenes would have to be reshot until they got it perfect. Zendaya, who played Anne Wheeler, had to learn how to become a trapeeze artist. During her interview with Jimmy Fallon, she talked about how she got used to a certain rig, but then when they moved her to the actual movie rig, it was about 15-20 feet higher, and she no longer had a net below her. During her song "Rewrite the Stars", she had to perform a routine with Zac Efron. During this routine, there is a part where they come together in the center, and have to hold onto each other, otherwise there would be a painful collision. Jimmy Fallon played a clip in which they collided, and had to redo the scene. He asked "how many times did that happen?". Zendaya stated, "that [clip] is just one of many we could choose from". This demonstrates one of the challenges the crew faced, having to redo scenes if one or multiple people ended up messing up on the choreography. I can't imagine how many takes they had to take of each scene to get it perfect. 

Since this movie was based on real events, the writers had to do

research what parts of the story they wanted to present. I read an article about it, and they actually cut out a lot of the story, which is understandable. Barnum definitely wasn't a good person as the movie illustrates. Instead he bought a black woman and represented her as one of Washington's 161 year old slaves. After she died, he sold tickets for people to come see her cut up so he could show she was actually half her supposed age. The director decided to show the world, instead, the birth of show business, represent how we feel when our dreams come true, and the challenges one could face in the path to achieving those dreams. This story had to be rewritten and storyboarded, before the songs could be written, and dances could be choreographed. There was so much planning put into this movie. Hugh Jackman, in an interview with Today, said that he tried to get this movie made for 7 and a half years. 

Something I thought was also really interesting, was the amount of

visual effects went into this movie. I didn't notice them when I was watching it last year (which was probably goal!), but it really shows how much the little details change the entire feel of the movie.