The Testament of Ann Lee, the acclaimed new film from award-winning writer/director Mona Fastvold (
The World to Come,
The Brutalist) tells the true story of Ann Lee, the British-born founder of the devotional sect known as the Shakers. It stars Amanda Seyfried as Lee, a controversial figure who preached gender and social equality, and Lewis Pullman as Lee’s younger brother William, who becomes her biggest evangelist and proselytizer in America. Charting Lee’s life, the film starts with her impoverished upbringing in Manchester, England, and traces her journey across the Atlantic with her followers and the building of her American utopian Shaker society in New England in the 18th century until her death in 1784.
And in keeping with Lee’s radical views and mission, the film is no stiff period drama. Instead, Fastvold and frequent collaborator writer/director Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), who co-wrote the script, crafted a wild ride conceived as an epic musical that spans continents and incorporates more than a dozen traditional Shaker hymns reimagined as the rapturous dance movements that gave the sect its name.
To help capture all of this, Fastvold (pictured) assembled a creative team that included cinematographer William Rexer, ASC (The Family McMullen,
Halston), editor Sofía Subercaseaux (
Maria), production designer Samuel Bader and colorist Mate Ternyik. Here, in an exclusive interview with
Post, she talks about the challenges involved and her love of post.
The Testament of Ann Lee will be available on digital March 10th.
What sort of film did you set out to make?
“There were so many challenges. Our budget was very limited — roughly $10 million, all I could raise for the film. At the same time, I wanted to give this woman and this community the epic story that they deserved. I wanted to recreate Manchester, cross an ocean and build a Shaker community, all of which was quite ambitious when I had limited means. At the same time, I also wanted to tell my version of the story, and honor her as well. I don't agree with her on everything or with them. I'm not a Shaker, I'm not religious, but I do think that there's so much to be gleaned from her story and her mission.”
You took another huge risk by also making it a musical. Why did you do that?
“It had to be that. It was terrifying to attempt a modern musical, and to then find it to be a really difficult genre. But they worshipped through ecstatic song and dance. They left behind over a thousand hymns. It's such a big part of their history, as big as all the boxes, brooms, beautiful chairs and barns which they're still known for. And before I learned a lot about them, I didn't really know the difference between the Quakers and the Shakers. I thought they were this puritanical, buttoned-up, celibate religion. And then, as I learned more about how they worshipped, I realized it was the opposite. It's this sensual, ecstatic expression of faith that is really fascinating and so different from what I’d expected.”
What did prep entail, and what were the main technical challenges of pulling this together?
“We started prep nearly a year before shooting, with dance rehearsal, and working on the accent, which was obviously very difficult, so there was a lot of work on that. And we started working with movement and creating the music and the songs, and the whole score, and how it was going to intertwine with the film, so it was a lengthy process. We didn't have the budget to have proper, organized rehearsals, but thankfully my cast and crew gave me all of their free time to work on weekends and evenings while we were all on other projects, which is probably the only way that we could make a film of this scale on this small budget.”
Tell us about the visual approach and working with your DP, William Rexer.
“My preferred format is always celluloid. I love shooting on film, and I wanted it to feel quite painterly. So, we started out with most of our references being religious paintings, especially the Dutch Masters and Caravaggio, and not just for the color palette, but also for the lighting. We wanted to add a lot of texture to the early images in Manchester as well, pushing it a bit and allowing for more grain, and using a lot of candlelight and then playing into a sort of godly light at times, but having it feel naturally motivated.
“I started working with Will early on, mostly just talking about our references and the ideas, and what I felt the film was going to look like. I brought in my production designer, Sam Bader, to those conversations, along with all of my department heads, so that everyone was aligned in terms of the visuals we were trying to achieve. That was our starting point. Then, when the story moves to America and the New World, we switched to a stock with a finer grain, and our color palette is much lighter. I knew that I had to trace a line from this darker, messier, chaotic, frantic world of Manchester, and then end up in the pure, more symmetrical, aesthetic world of the Shakers that most people are familiar with. So, it was slowly making our way into that aesthetic and finding that journey.”
Did you plan from the start to shoot 35mm and then blow it up to 70mm in post?
“Yes, it was always the plan. I've tested it a lot on other projects, and we tested 35mm and 70mm prints for this film, and when we compared the two, we found the 70mm gave us even more exciting images, especially for the darker scenes, fire sequences and the massive dancing sequences. It gave us more texture, more clarity, and more variations in the blacks and the darker colors. But it's tricky, because you must be so careful with the highlights, so it's a very delicate balance.”
Tell us about the shoot.
“Most of it was done in Hungary, outside Budapest. We had to recreate three key locations and settings: her childhood in Manchester, the ocean crossing, and then her life in America. We found a really beautiful property where we could build a lot of our sets. It had two historical buildings that we could augment for her childhood home, and we built part of our Shaker Village there, as well as interior sets for New York. And I also was lucky enough to shoot for a week at the real historic Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts. Then we had a two-day shoot in Sweden for the Atlantic crossing boat sequence. It's the only place I could find a period tall ship that I could shoot on, because I couldn't afford to build it, but it was docked and we couldn’t move it, so I had to put all my wind and rain effects on the dock. Then we also shot on another ship that we could take out to open sea.”
Where did you do all the post?
“We edited, did our color grade, our VFX and our sound mix in London at Automatik Post, but we ended up having to do our final mix in their Berlin studio because we needed a bigger room. Sound supervisor Steve Single mixed all the music with our composer Daniel Blumberg and myself, so it was very collaborative. We also did some model work and used traditional, hand-painted matte paintings by matte artist Leigh Took of Mattes & Miniatures Visual Effects in London for our period set extensions. I find that with budget constraints, it's really beneficial to look to the past and classic films like Moby Dick and how they dealt with shooting ships at sea and before you had massive CG builds. And I also like the handmade nature of working with models and a wonderful matte painter, and then combining it with some modern VFX techniques.”
What were the main editing challenges?
“The way that I write and shoot is very precisely planned. I don't give myself a ton of options, we don't overshoot too much, so there's not many surprises in the edit. The biggest challenge for Sofia and I was more subtle — finding the balance between the humor and the sincerity of the story, because there are moments that are quite funny and absurd. But I never wanted to ridicule the Shakers. I always wanted to treat them with respect, but at the same time, there's things that are just wonderfully absurd, and I wanted to have that levity coexist with these moments of great drama and big emotions. Sometimes we would lean too much in one direction, and then we would have to pull it back, so finding the perfect balance was tricky. And then you're also working with the music and trying to find that perfect balance of the musical experience of it all in the mix with my editor and my composer.”
Tell us about the visual effects work.
“Our visual effects team at Automatik was quite small, but so creative, led by VFX supervisor Des Anwar and VFX producer Toby Langley. We were really excited by how they could take the matte painting plates and then, in the subtlest of ways, make them come alive. For instance, they’d take a few real birds and add them to the painted sky, and ever so slightly animate the painted clouds, and then add a tiny glimpse of them in a window and marry it all so it was totally seamless. And they worked with us on the scenes with the ship at sea and the storm, marrying model work with more real waves and adding layers of rain, wind and lightning, and bringing all those elements together. Then we printed everything out on film and then scanned it back in, and I loved combining the old and the new in that way. It feels slightly artificial, but still real.”
How about the color grade?
“We did a bit of tweaking in the grade, but we were shooting things close to how we wanted it, so you're not reinventing the look, and Will lit it all so beautifully, so it was more about preserving what was important. We did tweak the blend of matte paintings and VFX work to make it all seamless, and we also took a lot of extra care tracing the de-aging of the characters. Mate, who did The Brutalist, did a lot of subtle work on Amanda to help with her youth in the beginning, and then heightening and helping her aging throughout the film, along with her old age makeup. Mate and Will completed the DCP grade in London, and then the final film was blown up to 70mm and graded at FotoKem.”
Did it turn out the way you first envisioned it?
“It did. Everything I shot is in the film, and post was just about tightening it all up. It's not so much about discovering it in post for me, it's more just trying to really elevate what you set out to do.”