Name: Ben Stiller Breaks Down a Prison Yard Scene from “Escape at Dannemora” | Vanity Fair
Uploaded: 2020-04-13T17:50:48.000Z
Duration: 10 min 43 s
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Hi, I'm Ben Stiller, and this is my notes on a scene or escape at Dannemora.

I wanted to direct this because I just thought it was a fascinating story.

Two prisoners escaping from a maximum security prison for riel in 2015 have something like that happens.

What were the relationships that developed inside the prison?

So this is, Ah, scene from the first episode on the North Yard, a Clinton Correctional, which is a state prison in upstate New York.

And this was sort of the first time that we see Richard, Matt and David sweat the two inmates who end up escaping together.

We were able to film the scene in the real prison.

It's on the side of a mountain in the Adirondacks and has this incredible view and spend there for over 100 years, just a really unique environment where all the prisoners get to go and have their outside time.

So this is a dominant cologne, great actor.

The person that we follow for this big crane shot to reveal the North Yard for the first time.

We basically had to get in and out in a day to shoot in this location because they were taking away yard time from the prisoners.

We couldn't get in there until right before we shot, so we didn't even know how we would shoot the shot.

At one point, we're talking about doing it with a drone.

They wouldn't allow us to have a drone in the prison.

They don't like having drones flying around prisons, these Air Guard stations.

And basically, that's where the four or five corrections officers who were on the yard will stay and watch over the 3 to 400 prisoners who are out on the yard.

So it's the ratio is not great if you're a corrections officer.

This is known to be the most dangerous place in Clinton.

Basically, these air little courts that air subdivided with numbers on them you'll see here number 1 20 All of these numbers refer to section or a court like here, you see, it's a CZ 1 21 so the hierarchy is sort of senior already in terms of what you know where you get it, because the higher up you go in the yard, the better the view is out to the Adirondacks.

And Richard, Matt and David Sweat were over here and this cord over here, which we end up getting to, eventually the shot.

So the idea was to set up the environment, follow one of the inmates as he walks through the yard and eventually got to Richard, Matt and David Sweat, who were out there hanging out.

I hope I just have to point out this this guy that's not a real prison guard.

This is Herbie Lieber's who is a Teamster driver who's been driving with me for 20 years and making movies every time.

New York is one of the senior Teamsters and one of my best friends, and so, uh, I, uh, he's also a zoo lander.

He's the guy who reads the magazine when at the gas station and throws it away before everybody blows up.

So it says he's been in about 55 other movies, very difficult to work with real prima donna.

So the idea was we wanted to show the life on the on the North Yard as O'Dell, the character was walking up to.

Basically, he's getting ingredients to make a hot toddy for Richard Matt, who is sort of the guy he works for in prison, that beneath the little Toro place, he's walking up here and you know he's trading things because that's what's going on here.

Guys are trading cigarettes and other illicit contraband as he's coming up here up to their court.

He's got all the ingredients to make the hot toddy.

And now you finally see the the view that these guys were looking at all day, which I thought was really interesting.

Just the, um, you know, just how counterintuitive it is to be stuck in a prison but looking out of this amazing vast landscape and freedom, which you can't have also what they're looking at over there, you can see the smoke stack to the power plant that ultimately is where the access tunnel leads to that they came out of.

And David Sweat knew that there had to be some sort of an access to that power plant, and that was where the steam pipe was coming from that was heating the prison that he eventually cut a hole into that they got out.

Yeah, you could do a shot like this and with a wide lens and be close up and have the same frame.

But then the background, everything you know, everything behind them would be much further away.

And you just see a lot more, a lot more being focused.

But this sort of like puts the focus on the accident.

Just is a feeling cinematographers like Victor Kemper or own Roisman from the seventies did this a lot really beautifully and and just sort of that was just coming out of, I think the necessity to shoot scenes without being ableto do long set up.

So on a setup like this, we have the camera here.

There's the two shot, and then there's the second camera.

Basically, we would be grabbing as much coverage as we could every time we did the scene.

We just do the scene over and over again as many times as we could, but here you could just feel like there's just so much texture here, even like the heat ripples coming off of the pot bellied stoves behind them.

And then here what's behind beneath Seo is you know, that's the guard tower down there.

And so, like, so all this stuff here with a wide angle lens would be much sharper and you'd actually know what it waas and when when you have this kind of, ah, longer lens, it just kind of makes it more just like everything stacked up, which just kind of gives it this nice kind of feel, which I always enjoy.

Now, you see, he kind of goes from Paul over to beneath you there.

That was our camera operator, just basically sort of free styling.

And they had free rein to just go ahead and kind of go.

Okay, let's just go between Let's follow the dialogue because he wanted to have sort of like that kind of roaming feel.

But I don't want to have, like, a super jerky kind of like handheld, you know, overly noticeable feeling, but just kind of allow it to have a little bit of that sort of found feeling that to me, you know, in this prison environment.

These guys were having all these different conversations that they don't really want anybody else to hear, so it's kind of intimate.

That's again, I think, another reason why the long lenses air cool because they sort of focus you in on the people in an environment that isn't very.

Ah, lot of this scene is also showing the dynamics between prisoners and Richard.

He's kind of ah, top of the food chain there.

Matt ended up painting Ah, Joyce Mitchell's two pugs and gave it to her as a gift.

They would they would barter paintings for favors from corrections officers, and and it was definitely a commodity for them.

You got two dogs sitting on the couch in the living room and I can see them like somewhere.

You sort of see the dynamic between these These two men who I think became friends, Really, Just because they have the sole goal of escaping together.

It's really interesting to hear David Sweat talk about Richard mad, and basically, he claims that he did everything in the escape.

I think this was an idea that beneath Seo came up with that I thought was really interesting.

Which was, um, you can see here he is bad era.

He's drawing on the is actually drawing on the, you know, table there.

And his idea was to show that, um literally the characters thinking out of the box.

Like I said, we had one day to shoot the whole scene, which is was scary to me because it's just that thing, like, all right, you wake up that morning, we got to get this whole thing and yeah, it went really well.

The guys were great with scene and we were done with it.

Most of it by one or two o'clock in the afternoon when the light had been not gotten, is good.

And then we're able to do go for the crane shot, which is the first shot.

This shot in the scene was actually the last shot that we did of the day because we're waiting for the sun to get low again.

Here's when the sun's lower its better light and it looks better.