\n

Rebel, wunderkind, trendsetter, pioneer, one-man band \u2014 all labels applied to Steven Soderbergh more regularly than, say, \u201cwinner of the Academy Award for Best Director\u201d or \u201cyoungest-ever Palme d\u2019Or recipient.\u201d Whatever the filmmaker\u2019s independent-leaning bona fides (and the list goes deeper than any one person can keep in their head simultaneously), Soderbergh\u2019s current run is a fertile, three-medium collaboration with Men in Black<\/em> and Bill & Ted<\/em> screenwriter Ed Solomon. In 2017, the two ever-so-slightly broke apart the possibilities of narrative and distribution with Mosaic<\/em>, an interactive, app-based, deliriously entertaining murder mystery (no longer online but since re-edited by Soderbergh into a strong HBO series); 2021 brought No Sudden Move<\/em>, an Elmore Leonard-esque thriller far more surprising and experiment-friendly than its streaming debut might suggest; and now they\u2019re back with the complex, formally audacious miniseries Full Circle<\/em> on Max.<\/p>\n

In Full Circle<\/em>, a child is kidnapped off the streets of New York \u2014 just not the one the kidnappers were trying to kidnap. But for the wealthy targets, the incident spills decades\u2019 worth of skeletons from the closet \u2014 and a conspiracy across two continents, two families, and multiple generations reaping what\u2019s been sown. The show feels equal parts Soderbergh and Solomon, the latter again imprinting his interest in secrets as crime\u2019s great motivator \u2014 especially as those secrets uphold the public face of generational wealth \u2014 while the former\u2019s directing-editing-cinematographer duties make it immediately identifiable after, say, one second. It blends readily identifiable actors (Timothy Olyphant, Claire Danes, Dennis Quaid, CCH Pounder) with a cast of up-and-comers; its location work puts most other New York productions to shame; and as a sprawling narrative it is more or less impossible to guess the who-what-when-where-why of its unfolding. <\/p>\n

Lest it seem Soderbergh\u2019s resting easy, July also saw the surprise premiere of Command Z<\/em>, a project that blurs the line between film and series and \u2014 despite also shooting in New York \u2014 breaks from most anything Full Circle<\/em> resembles or even suggests. No surprise for his fans: This is the director who immediately followed the 12-month run of Traffic, Erin Brockovich<\/em>, and Ocean\u2019s Eleven<\/em> with Full Frontal<\/em> (I\u2019ll give you a second to look it up) and Solaris<\/em> (maybe his best film; it got an F CinemaScore). Or who helped innovate the day-and-date theater\/VOD split with Bubble<\/em>. Or readily embraced shooting movies on iPhones. Or followed his two-part Che Guevara biopic with a lo-fi experiment starring an adult-film actress. Or who\u2026 oh, I could keep going, but once I\u2019m finished listing examples it\u2019ll be time to write about another film, series, app, whatever<\/em> Soderbergh\u2019s just debuted.<\/p>\n

Safe to say it\u2019s fruitful ground for speaking with the director, who I joined on a Zoom roundtable with two other journalists. The below represents my questions, but even sufficient time with Soderbergh is hardly scratching the surface of where we might go.<\/p>\n

Polygon: <\/strong>Full Circle<\/strong><\/em> brings you back to television for the first time in earnest since <\/strong>The Knick<\/strong><\/em>. If there\u2019s a connection it\u2019s in both shows\u2019 handheld, roving style. How much of that is about the demand of the format and how quickly you need to get it done? Do you think of film and TV as two different styles?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Steven Soderbergh:<\/strong> The Knick<\/em> is almost exclusively handheld. There\u2019s probably half a dozen shots that are in \u201cstudio mode,\u201d probably because I was using a zoom. Whereas in Full Circle<\/em> there are more shots in \u201cstudio mode.\u201d That would depend on what the scene was and how long I felt I was going to be holding a shot, and then how the shot was going to develop in terms of the staging. <\/p>\n

One example: Early in episode 3, where we see the Brown family for the first time, I start close on this bag of drugs that they\u2019ve gotten to calm Derek [Olyphant] down. I come out with him into the living room; the four of them are talking; then Sam [Danes] goes back into the kitchen, picks up the drugs, and walks back over to Derek. I wanted to keep all that sort of moving in one shot, but I also wanted the camera to be adjusting itself vertically as we were going. That very quickly became a shot: When you\u2019re starting 18 inches from that bag, pulling all the way into the other room, up into the corner, handheld \u2014 that would\u2019ve just become distracting and not as elegant. So it really depended on what I wanted people to be paying attention to and what kind of energy the scene required.<\/p>\n

As far as speed: That\u2019s not so much of a factor to me because we can set up shots \u2014 like the one I just described \u2014 and execute them pretty quickly. The thing that takes time when you have a lot of work in a day is unnecessary coverage. And so if you can rehearse and block and stage something and know where the cuts are coming before you shoot it \u2014 and you don\u2019t capture any redundant material, you\u2019re not doing 20, 30 takes \u2014 you can move pretty quickly. I do like to move quickly, not just because it keeps the actors hot, but also I don\u2019t like to burn my crews out. Let\u2019s say we average a 9.5, 10-hour day. Part of that is because, again, people need to stay fresh. The other is making sure that I have enough time after the shoot is over to get all the material, cut that day\u2019s footage together, and know whether there\u2019s something we need to go back and do again as quickly as possible. So that means, sometimes, calling the 1st AD at 9 or 10 at night saying, \u201cYou need to put on the call sheet tomorrow that I want to redo these two shots we did today.\u201d<\/p>\n

That happens a couple of times a week at least. It\u2019s also an awareness that if I say, \u201cWe\u2019re shooting a 10-hour day, so call time is 8 and shooting wrapped at 6,\u201d I\u2019m very aware \u2014 because of how wound into the crew I am because of the jobs I\u2019m performing \u2014 that there were people there many hours before shooting call and there will be many there many hours after shooting call. Their day is not a \u201c10-hour day\u201d; their day is more like a 14- or 15-hour day, even on a \u201cshort\u201d day. So \u2014 in the aid of not grinding people to dust \u2014 I try to be very cognizant of how long things are taking and how long the days are.<\/p>\n

Do you have an estimate of how long the shooting schedule was on <\/strong>Full Circle<\/strong><\/em>, and how that compares to a two-hour feature?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The total, I think, ended up being \u2014 with all the reshoots \u2014 around 72, 73 days. That\u2019s the same amount we shot both seasons of The Knick<\/em>; that was 10 hours. My average, typically, for a two-hour movie has been about 35 days. So it was kind of in the middle, somewhere. But unlike The Knick<\/em>, during the editing process I think we threw out 65, 70 minutes of edited material and reshot an equal amount, so it was a pretty sizable overhaul.<\/p>\n

As a New Yorker I was taken with <\/strong>Full Circle<\/strong><\/em>\u2019s location work \u2014 including areas most directors just wouldn\u2019t go to. I looked up storefronts and couldn\u2019t believe how far out you traveled in some cases. Even more obvious locations like Washington Square Park are used to their full advantage \u2014 if you really know that space, each entrance, exit, and bench is utilized for maximum impact. When you took a directing sabbatical <\/strong>there was a quote<\/strong> I always remembered about how much you hate getting in the van to scout. But <\/strong>Full Circle<\/strong><\/em> feels like the work of somebody who got in the van and found the perfect spots to stage the action.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, I still hate it. But there\u2019s no way around it. I\u2019ve experimented with some of the technology that\u2019s available when you send a scout out. They can wear this thing that\u2019s essentially like one of the Google Street vans and walk through a space and upload it for me, and it\u2019s a 360-degree capture that I can pan, tilt, do everything and see it, and that\u2019s helpful. It\u2019s a good tool<\/em>, but I know from experience I have to go. Like, you have to go<\/em> \u2014 it\u2019s just different. Being there is just different. What often happens \u2014 no matter how exhausted your location scout is \u2014 is: You\u2019ll roll up to a location and be looking around and then end up seeing something, or finding something near there that you hadn\u2019t seen before that you like better. That\u2019s why you\u2019ve always got to get in the van: You need to see not only what they photographed for you or were showing you, but what\u2019s around you that they didn\u2019t show you or may be better or spark a different approach to the piece.<\/p>\n