The directors behind some of Netflix’s biggest hits of the year came together to speak to their creative processes and storytelling techniques in conversations moderated by Variety in partnership with Netflix.
Antonio Campos, who directed “The Beast In Me”; Max Winkler from “Monster: The Ed Gein Story”; and Alexandria Stapleton, director of “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” spoke with Variety’s Jazz Tangcay about their visual languages, the challenges of documenting an unfolding story and portraying real-life people.
Campos described his show as “contemporary noir,” saying, “we embrace weird ideas… I’m always thinking about the edit as the rhythm of the show and making it dynamic.” Campos said he and his director of photography, Lyle Vincent, often drew inspiration from 1970’s paranoia thrillers, like those from Gordon Willis or “Michael Clayton.”
Winkler also drew inspiration from films, like Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” when building the stillness and quiet of the plains, aiming to make Gein’s character appear small. Stapleton discussed the chaos and challenges of working on Sean “Diddy” Combs’ story as the grand jury trial unfolded in real time. “The other thing that we were fighting was that everyone was really obsessed with these really scandalous details,” said Stapleton. “[There’s] a whole doc about baby oil, and so we really wanted to dig under the hood to understand the context, the timeline, all of the origin story: how was this even possible?”
