Sarah Siegel-Magness (Bus’95) co-produced Precious, the 2009 film that won two Academy Awards — one for best supporting actress and the other for best adapted screenplay.
Sarah Siegel-Magness (Bus’95) never doubted the decision to turn the controversial young-adult book Push: A Novel (Vintage) into the Oscar-winning film Precious, despite widespread skepticism that the story’s gut-punching realism would find an audience.
After all, the tale of an HIV-positive, obese, illiterate African-American teen, her emotionally abusive mother, a history of incest, a child with Down Syndrome and AIDS didn’t reflect typical Hollywood fare. No explosions — except the emotional kind. No sappy, happy ending — just a real one. Young Clareese Precious Jones fights through her difficulties, and though saddled with challenges at film’s end, she is prepared to move ahead.
“The story tugged on our hearts,” says Siegel-Magness, co-producer of the film with her husband, Gary Magness, whose Denver family has long-standing connections to the cable entertainment industry. “We just knew making the film would be a smart business move and it would touch people.”
Siegel-Magness isn’t the only CU alum with a connection to Oscar gold this year. Viki Psihoyos (Jour’02) worked closely with her husband on The Cove, the documentary-cum-investigative thriller about the slaughter of dolphins near a Japanese village. And Gary Sharp (PhDElEngr’92) helped create the new-generation 3D technology that wowed audiences and critics in James Cameron’s science-fiction epic Avatar, in which a paraplegic soldier of the future finds love and helps save a peaceable alien civilization from the encroachment of violent, planet-raping earthlings.
CU — Hollywood, Colo.? Is it something in the Boulder water?
All three grads agree CU provided an environment and foundation that got their very different creative skills flowing.
“There was a lot of freedom,” says Sharp, who was chief technology officer for Boulder-based ColorLink, which developed the new 3D tech. The company is now owned by California-based RealD, which worked closely with Cameron on Avatar.
Precious catches her attention
Siegel-Magness still considers producing an avocation; her eight-year-old, multimillion-dollar clothing company So-Low is her primary business. She also does a great deal of charity work, and with singer Mariah Carey — who plays a social worker in ±Ę°ů±đł¦ľ±´ÇłÜ˛őĚý— helped start “Camp Precious” for disadvantaged girls.
And it was actually through So-Low — which found early success with underwear designed for newly popular low-rise pants — that Siegel-Magness got into filmmaking. In fact, the company helped bring her together with Lee Daniels, the director of PreciousĚý˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýMonster’s Ball, which netted an Oscar for actress Halle Berry.
“Lee had read an article about me and my clothing company,” says Siegel-Magness, who grew up in Boulder and is the daughter of Celestial Seasonings founder Mo Siegel. She got a cold call suggesting that she and Daniels “would be a great match.”
They met, and that connection eventually led to Siegel-Magness and her husband producing Daniels’ film Tennessee about two brothers searching for their estranged father in hopes of saving another sibling who has leukemia. After the first film, the husband and wife team decided they liked producing. They came across PushĚý(°ů±đ˛Ô˛ąłľ±đ»ĺĚýPrecious because of a recent sci-fi dud called Push) and knew Daniels was the right man for the project. Siegel-Magness and her husband’s next film is based on the “Judy Moody” kids books by Megan McDonald.
Siegel-Magness says she is a “hands-on” producer who enjoys being involved with everything from managing a budget to viewing “dailies” — raw footage — to auditioning a cast. Mo’nique, who won a best supporting actress Oscar for her take on Precious’ troubled, vicious mother, and Gabourey Sidibe who played Precious, particularly impressed her.
“As soon as Gabby auditioned we knew she was something special. She was smart, funny, strong and could light up a room,” she says. “Mo’nique is so good it’s scary.”
Immersing herself in The Cove
Viki Psihoyos, like Siegel-Magness, knew her film would touch people. In The Cove, her husband, photographer and filmmaker Louie Psihoyos, went to extraordinary lengths to expose the dolphin slaughter, mounting hidden cameras on everything from submerged, algae-covered rocks to birds’ nests. The film sheds light on Taiji, Japan, which, despite its preferred public reputation as a place devoted to its marine mammals, quietly stages the bloody bludgeoning of its ocean-going residents.
“We wanted to give people the tools to create armies of supporters and activists,” says Viki Psihoyos who serves as communications director for her husband’s film and photography projects. She is co-founder of their Boulder-based nonprofit, the Ocean Preservation Society.
The Cove, which was filmed in Taiji, Japan, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary of 2009. Viki Psihoyos (Jour’02) worked closely with her husband on the movie.
By all accounts, The Cove has had a big effect, catalyzing a global protest against the killings. The Oscar statuette standing oh-so-casually on the couple’s kitchen table, as if it was a salt shaker or bottle of hot sauce, serves as weighty, golden affirmation of the film’s impact.
But it also has angered some in Japan, apparently even the Japanese mafia, Viki Psihoyos says. In fact, the film’s official Japanese debut was delayed this spring because of safety concerns. In April, Louie Psihoyos told Oprah Winfrey that he’d been getting death threats from “militant factions” in Japan.
Although Viki Psihoyos didn’t travel to Japan for the film, she provided a kind of logistical “base camp” from the couple’s north Boulder home. She has been the “e-team” for both the film and the Ocean Preservation Society, creating Facebook and Twitter accounts using skills she learned while studying under journalism teacher Bruce Henderson who serves as communications director at CU’s Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society. She also took care of crucial tasks such as receiving and caring for shipments of film along with less Oscar-worthy jobs.
“We do what needs to be done . . . I may be the boss’ wife, but I also change the toilet paper,” she says with a laugh.
From thousands of miles away she worried at times about the crew’s well-being.
“I had the lawyer on speed dial in case (Louie) got arrested. I made the contacts with the state department,” says Viki Psihoyos who is working with her husband on their next film, a documentary called Singing Planet about the destruction of the environment.
µţłÜľ±±ô»ĺľ±˛Ô˛µĚýAvatar’s foundation
Gary Sharp’s connection to Avatar, which won the Oscar for visual effects and two others, may seem less obvious than that of Siegel-Magness or Viki Psihoyos. Of the three, he’s the only one without a statuette. But the technology he developed, based on work he started at CU as a doctoral student in the early 1990s, may have a greater impact on the future of filmmaking.
The technology is complex and difficult to summarize. But Sharp says old 3D technology was based on “sequential color” techniques — think of a wheel of red, blue and green spinning rapidly before your eyes.
“That was a dying technology,” he says. The new technology is a “sequential polarization” method, which involves two different projections, one for each eye, “shuttering” at about 1/144th of a second; when one projection is open, the other is black.
Gary Sharp (PhDElEngr’92) helped create the new-generation 3D technology in James Cameron’s science-fiction epic Avatar, which won three Academy Awards in 2009 for Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects and Best Art Director.
“You are tricking your brain. Any time your eyes get different imagery, your brain immediately goes to work trying to extract depth information,” Sharp says.
When the imagery is presented quickly enough, the eye isn’t able to “catch up,” which produces the illusion of depth.
The less-than-impressive effects of old-school 3D were seldom worth the sharp headaches experienced by those who staggered in pain from theaters. When Sharp saw Avatar, he was pleased to see how his work — at CU initially and later at his company ColorLink — was integral not only to audience immersion in a vivid 3D world but also viewer comfort.
“I think it was definitely in the top two for 3D imagery I’ve seen,” he says. “And in terms of comfort, you didn’t feel like your brain was being messed with so much.”
The film’s effects are astonishing. Digital images dominate with the lush, vivid landscapes of the planet Pandora. The blue-hued, catlike N’avi people — including the vat-grown “avatars” into which humans like hero Jake Sully project their digital selves — fire arrows over viewers’ heads. An alien bestiary rumbles, soars and slinks toward startled audiences. But in some ways, the genius of the new technology is most apparent in more subtle effects — a gently undulating, airborne, ethereal seed pod slipping over a sea of slender, upraised N’avi hands.
ColorLink’s journey to Hollywood was complex. When Hollywood 3D company RealD started up and was seeking partners, it discovered Sharp’s company. ColorLink provided the key components to RealD for a 3D digital cinema experiment.
The Walt Disney Company, ever the pioneer in animation, quickly saw the potential for marrying three technologies — digital projection, computer-generated imagery and Sharp’s sequential polarization method — to create a better 3D mousetrap. Disney’s trial-run film Chicken Little in 2005 quickly demonstrated that audiences preferred the new 3D technology to conventional 2D movies.
“The guys who started RealD had it right,” Sharp says. “This is the best thing that’s happened to cinema in a long time.”
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