The Producer's Panel on Saturday morning was redolent with dark humor. The Santa Barbara International Film Festival brings Oscar contenders annually to town, and every year the audience is treated to the insiders' insights into an unforgiving and immensely difficult task (because of actors, directors, and studios) and also a creative and immensely rewarding task (because of actors, directors, and studios).
For The Shape of Water, a film directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro that has received 13 Oscar nominations, producer J. Miles Dale asked, "How do you pitch a story about a meek cleaning woman who falls in love with a fish?" when considering funding it for $19 million versus, say, $100 million. "The budget is a state of mind," the director had told him. "Bullshit," Dale thought, until he realized that del Toro, a filmmaking pro of 25 years, made choices that kept the project within budget. Del Toro also squeezed it into the 58 days between seasons of the television series The Strain, with which both are involved.
The war stories continued as Peter Spears recalled that the summer of 2016 in Italy, where Call Me By Your Name was filmed, was the "wettest, coldest, rainiest in 200 years." The actors wore wetsuits while appearing to bask in lakes and rivers, and kept ice cubes in their mouths to keep their breath from steaming when they spoke their lines. The balmy summer on view was all due to cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, he said.