Bagaimana cara menciptakan seorang bintang pop? Itulah pertanyaan yang diberikan sutradara film “Mother Mary”, David Lowery, kepada para seniman filmnya – termasuk koreografer Dani Vitale, sutradara fotografi Rina Yang, dan perancang kostum Bina Daigeler – untuk menciptakan diva utama, Mother Mary.
“Mother Mary,” yang saat ini tayang di bioskop pilihan, memperkenalkan ikon baru (diperankan oleh Anne Hathaway) ke dalam pantheon yang terus berkembang dari bintang pop fiksi. Di film ini, Mother Mary disajikan sebagai sosok yang telah menentukan genre musik, memikat penonton, dan menciptakan persona yang hampir mitologis selama beberapa dekade ia telah tampil. Namun, thriller Lowery ini mempertemukan tur arena besar sang artis dengan gambaran menghantui dari hubungan terputusnya dengan mantan perancang kostum dan sahabatnya, Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel).
Proses untuk mewujudkan prestasi semacam itu memakan waktu lama, kata Vitale, yang menjelaskan bahwa tim melakukan sekitar “10 tahun pengembangan seniman dalam enam bulan,” yang mencakup segalanya mulai dari menetapkan timeline dari karier Mother Mary (Apakah dia di album keenamnya? Berapa lama hiatus ini?) hingga tampilan perilisan album labelnya. Dan sementara karakter Hathaway pastinya akan dibandingkan dengan bintang pop modern seperti Lady Gaga dan Taylor Swift, tim fokus pada menyatukan elemen kontemporer ketenaran untuk menciptakan seorang artis yang terasa familiar namun unik.
Dalam hal inspirasi, ya, Gaga dan Swift menjadi fokus utama, kata Vitale, tetapi lebih tentang mengidentifikasi apa yang ingin mereka evokasi dengan Mother Mary daripada meminjam sesuatu dari setiap ikon secara spesifik. “Bagaimana kita menangkap pikiran, jiwa, emosi, dan semangat orang seperti Taylor?” katanya. Dari Gaga, itu kekuatan dan kerentanannya. Untuk desain kostum Daigeler, Swift, bersama dengan Beyoncé dan Dua Lipa, hadir di papan suasana hati; adegan konser film ini dipengaruhi oleh pengalaman Yang dalam memproduksi secara kreatif tur arena dan bekerja pada video musik untuk Swift, FKA Twigs, Haim, dan lebih banyak. “Saya memiliki banyak pengetahuan tentang cara menyusun konser dan cara menjual skala,” kata Yang.
Untuk sepenuhnya menetapkan kehebatan musik Mother Mary, Lowery merekrut ikon pop sejati dalam hidupnya, Charli xcx, Jack Antonoff, dan FKA Twigs (yang memainkan karakter pendukung dalam film) untuk membentuk, mengembangkan, dan memproduksi lagu-lagu pop inspirasional goth untuk karakter tersebut.
Hathaway, yang keterampilan bermusiknya membantunya memenangkan Oscar untuk “Les Misérables,” bekerja dengan pelatih vokal untuk menyempurnakan suaranya sebagai bintang pop. “Tidak ada dari kami yang ingin Mother Mary terdengar seperti orang lain,” katanya. “Kami ingin dia menjadi sesuatu yang unik, dan kami ingin dia menjadi seseorang yang penonton percaya bisa bersaing dengan ikon dan dewi pop ini selama 20 tahun terakhir.”
Sementara gaya sonik Mother Mary kunci untuk ide karakter, menjadi seorang bintang pop tentang lebih dari sekadar musik: Kostum yang tepat, koreografi, dan konser spektakuler diperlukan untuk benar-benar menjual visi tersebut. “Kami menciptakan bintang pop kami sendiri – di lagu-lagu, di lirik, di kostum,” kata Daigeler. “Itu adalah bagian yang sangat menyenangkan.”
Di bawah ini, Variety menjelaskan bagaimana Vitale, Yang, dan Daigeler berhasil melakukannya.
As a dancer and director in addition to being a choreographer, Vitale used her experiences working with artists like Rihanna, Katy Perry, Halsey, Panic! At the Disco, Demi Lovato and many more to get Hathaway into Mother Mary mode. Audiences might expect a choreographer to exclusively help with dance moves, but, for Vitale, that’s never been the case. “We get in at the ground floor in pure artist development,” she explains. “So it’s, ‘What does your music sound like? What’s your persona name and what do you want to convey to the world?’ [That] is my first job.”
For Hathaway to fully embody the essence of Mother Mary, the two rehearsed as if the actor was really setting out on tour. Vitale describes the process: “I’m ignoring that you’re Anne. I’m ignoring that this is a film. Let’s actually spend the time as if you were an actual pop star.” Given Hathaway is an actor first and foremost, erasing her previously established physicality to create the foundation for Mother Mary was a big piece of the puzzle. “My goal was really to kind of crack and break and find those abrasions and weaknesses in her and really highlight that,” Vitale says. “Because that’s what makes something grungy and relatable.”
For months, Hathaway trained for six to seven hours a day in everything from jazz to ballet to hip hop, “so when we did get the music, we could just jump into anything full force,” Vitale says. Even during lunch breaks, they’d be deep in Mother Mary development. “I’d make her watch award shows, make her watch tours, make her watch music videos, teach her about certain movements. How to hold the microphone and how to switch it off,” Vitale adds. “We had to study, and she had to learn how to do it in a way that she looked like she’s been doing it her whole life.”
The final choreography for the film, which Vitale describes as “timeless and impactful and powerful,” builds upon Mother Mary’s identity as an artist, telling a story alongside her synth-pop soundtrack that makes it clear why this particular pop star is considered a great in the world of the film. Though, as Vitale notes, having a fabulous real-life star playing the icon doesn’t hurt: “What better canvas to put this on than Anne fucking Hathaway?”
When it came to costuming the character, Daigeler focused on capturing the essence of her song lyrics while also incorporating the pop star’s emotions and personality into the glamorous, colorful onstage looks. While not every costume Diageler ideated made it into the finished film, she conceptualized the artist’s looks from the early days of her career (somewhere in the early 2000s) to the moment she finds herself about to make her long-awaited comeback (the late 2010s). With each costume, things got “more glamorous and more glamorous,” Diageler explains; during concert scenes, audiences see Hathaway donning bright red dresses, bedazzled bodysuits and knee-high stilettos.
A defining part of Mother Mary’s on-stage look – and her identity as an artist – are her halos, a gothic element Lowery ideated. Hathaway rehearsed with the halos, ensuring she could dance and move around on stage with them once filming began. “That was quite a challenge,” Diageler says.
Mother Mary’s concert costumes were song-specific. “‘Dark Cradle’ was completely inspired by the darkness,” says Diageler. “It was a very structured costume with this very specific silhouette, and the material that I used was a little bit more like a cage.” The song ‘Holy Spirit,’ on the other hand, lent itself to a very vulnerable costume. “It has this hole around her core, and it’s all embroidered… She looks really fragile in that costume, and it looks like everything can come inside [her], but also everything can get out,” says Diagler.
What would a pop star be without a lineup of elaborate, show-stopping concerts? For “Mother Mary,” Yang and Vitale worked to ensure the on-stage scenes made moviegoers feel as though they were really in Mother Mary’s audience, not watching a phoned-in recreation. “You can really lose viewers and the authenticity and realness of a performer if the concerts fall flat,” says Vitale. Yang concurs: “A lot of concerts in films just don’t look real, or it just looks sad. We wanted to make it look epic.”
One of the most important elements was nailing down the scale and vision for Mother Mary’s shows – a process that included many iterations of what the stage could look like – and translating those things onto film. “Obviously, we can’t put on an arena show,” Yang says. But the team was able to pull off most of the production without any visual effects, building the physical stage and assembling an audience for the live performances. Yang also tapped into her music background by “live directing where the camera should go,” which added a “fluid process to the music and performance.”
The extent of VFX, done by Visual Noise Creative, came down to things like crowd duplication and extending the height of the flying platform, which Hathaway actually sang on top of. “In a real arena show, it would fly farther and higher,” says Yang. “But in the venue we were in, it’s smaller than the actual arena that we envisioned.” Either way, though, the platform was suspended high in the air. “It’s pretty amazing that she did it herself,” Yang says of Hathaway.
About the actor’s transformation, she adds: “I was so amazed. I was like, ‘You’re a real pop star.’ The pop star has to be able to sell it. She pulled that off, and then we made sure that she looked good.”
