Akeelah and the Bee

[Kim Welch]

Hi David,

I went to see "Akeelah and the Bee" when it opened.

I have been too tied up with Jury Duty and the NAB tradeshow to say anything about it. I want to let you know that I enjoyed the movie and contrary to a pre release review I read that the end was obvious I found it very interesting and a nice finish. It is great that it is a top ten and got two great ratings on yahoo.com
http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1808718529

Did you shoot in the real location of the national spilling bee? The style of the cinematography was interesting and specifically in the camera movements. One that stands out is the circular camera moves such as the one when Laurence Fishburne is outside and being confronted about his past... was this something that was planned during the pre production?

congraduations. I Hope to see more soon.


Truly
Kim

 

[David Mullen ASC]

The real National Spelling Bee is in something like the Grand Ballroom of the Hyatt in Washington D.C. We shot the movie in Los Angeles and couldn't find a similar ballroom in the LA hotels that was similar -- too many had a high drop-panelled ceiling with no way to rig stage lights. So we ended up at the Hollywood Palladium, which was great because it had a truss system already in place, plus on two sides, it had a second floor balconey where I could put even more lights.

The director shot some footage in 24P HD on the F900 the year before in Washington D.C. which we used for some B-roll shots of monuments, plus a montage of kids spelling on stage. I shot our actors in 24P HD as well to intercut into that montage sequence with lots of whip pans and snap zooms. Otherwise, the movie was shot in 35mm anamorphic.

The director spent years trying to get the movie financed and by the time of shooting, had already storyboarded the whole movie himself except for the final spelling bee. I drew the storyboards for the final bee based on his rough notes and early drafts of the boards -- he wanted to see if I had any new ideas, but half the shots were from his rough draft anyway, plus a lot of it was basic coverage. But I basically re-thought the sequence with two cameras in mind (plus a third video camera for ESPN-type material playing on TV sets), something he didn't know he'd have when he did the original rough boards. And of course, he modified and had final say on my boards. We blew them up and pasted them on a large poster board just to be able to plan out the days of shooting for the final bee, it was so complicated -- mainly because we only had the whole audience and kids on stage for the first day of shooting, plus a crane, after which we had to fake it in coverage.

Doug wanted a lot of swirling camera movement, which is not usually my thing but I tried to give him everything on his storyboards, sort of as a challenge to myself to solve the problems of moving the camera so much. His basic concept was that spelling would be treated as a sporting event.

This will be the year to see my work in a theater. Besides "Akeelah and the Bee", I have a smaller HD feature playing called "When Do We Eat?". And in July, a thriller I did in Philadelphia called "Shadowboxer" gets a small release, and in the fall, the new Polish Brothers movie "The Astronaut Farmer", starring Billy Bob Thornton, comes out -- my biggest project to date.