Making of ‘Air’: Watch our panel with 4 artisans behind the Ben Affleck film [Exclusive Video Interview]

Joyce Eng
·5 min read

You know a script is good when you give up your vacation to join the movie. Sound mixer Willie D. Burton was working on “Oppenheimer” with Matt Damon when the actor asked what he was doing next. Burton said he was taking a vacation. Damon countered with an offer he eventually couldn’t refuse: Alex Convery‘s script for “Air.”

“I read the script and it’s pretty incredible. So I said to Matt, ‘I’m not taking a vacation. I’m gonna do your film.’ And he says, ‘It’s gonna be like camp, like summer camp. Just treat it like summer camp. We’ll have a good time and everything will be good and we’ll have some fun,'” Burton tells Gold Derby at our Making of “Air” panel with the Oscar-contending editor William Goldenberg, costume designer Charlese Antoinette Jones and production designer François Audouy. “And sure enough, we worked through it. … It’s one of the better films of my career.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.

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The summer camp vibe befits the scrappy underdog tone of the Ben Affleck film. A sports biopic that’s not about a person, “Air” chronicles the creation of Nike’s Air Jordan line, masterminded by talent scout Sonny Vaccaro (Damon), who pushed for the signing of rookie Michael Jordan in 1984 and to build a shoe line around him. The groundbreaking line launched the then-fledgling Nike from third place, behind Adidas and Converse, into, well, the stratosphere and redefined athlete endorsement deals.

Pre-production was only five weeks and production itself a brisk 23 days. “When Willie said ‘camp,’ that’s exactly what it felt like,” Audouy says. “So many people refer to the experience of making this movie like everyone getting together in Santa Monica for like a ‘Let’s make a movie’ camp. It didn’t feel like a job. It felt like a lot of friends getting together and making a movie we all believed in.” The fast-and-loose mode also led the team to an empty 22,000-square-foot office building in Santa Monica, which doubled as both the set and a production office, allowing everyone to work together in the same space in true camp style.

SEE Ben Affleck’s ‘Air’ to receive Visionary Icon and Creator Tribute at Gotham Awards

“We turned it into Nike in 1984. And then the other half of the building was the production office. So we were like literally working out of the set and we didn’t have enough time to get it all done,” Audouy explains. “We literally resurfaced every door and ceiling and floor and window. Every single surface in this building was resurfaced to turn it into Nike and we were working around the clock. We’d have these incredible actors rehearsing in the space at the same time and Billy editing down the hall and Charlese making costumes down the other hall. It was like the most surreal experience.”

Jones found herself going into Audouy’s office even when he wasn’t there to peruse his reference photos for inspiration. Auduoy’s team would do the same with her office. “Our fitting rooms had all the research up, so when the actors came in, they knew exactly what the world was supposed to look like and what they’ll look like in this world,” she shares. “The time period we’re dealing with, there weren’t a lot of neons yet. Those neons were later, so we were working a lot with earth tones. In Portland, it’s a nature-based town, outdoorsy, so earth tones was the push for me for costumes. It just worked really, really well with the sets, with the walls, all the textures that François put into the spaces. I’m just really excited about how it all came together because we didn’t have a lot of time.”

And yes, they made a conscious choice to leave out red until the first Air Jordan shoe is unveiled toward the end of the film. “It was very intentional,” Jones says.

The off-the-cuff, open collaboration continued throughout production. Because they were shooting so quickly, five cameras were used and Goldenberg, who won an Oscar for Affleck’s “Argo” (2012), had to cut everything that was shot that day before the next day. That meant long hours and sometimes walking in at 7 a.m. to find Affleck in his office on Avid.

“He’s pretty good on the Avid,” Goldenberg states. “More importantly, I would cut stuff, and Matt and Ben would come in and say, ‘Wait a second, we need a transition here. That scene doesn’t quite work the way we scripted it. What can we shoot?’ And the three of us would sit and kick around ideas, and Matt or Ben would come up with something brilliant and go, ‘OK, we’ll be right back.’ And they’d go out and shoot it. Or the next morning they’d shoot it. So it was really fun for me to be that involved. And sitting there with Ben and Matt, who are so brilliant, like watching them work stuff out together, imagining them working on ‘Good Will Hunting’ 20 years ago or more than 20 years ago probably. It was a real treat for me to be in the room with those two guys, [seeing] their shorthand together, and watch them work.”

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