A British tabloid picked up on an interview on the DocFix Documentary Storytelling Podcast and ran with it. Before you know it, something of a shitstorm developed around what seemed to be negative comments from John Mathieson, the interviewee, about Ridley Scott’s multiple camera methods.
Mathieson first worked with Scott on the original Gladiator and has worked with him on five more movies, including Gladiator II.
The interview seemed to suggest that the method was “really lazy” and that Ridley Scott was impatient. As soon as the storm broke, both the podcast host and Mathison himself were straight on to Deadline to respond, saying that is not what was said or implied, and it only appeared this way because of the editing. A 2-hour interview was cut down to 30 minutes so comments about the industry in a wider context appeared to be focussed on Scott.
The podcast host confirmed this and said the negative implication was not deliberate:
“All this happened over almost two hours. Then I had to cut it down to around 30 [minutes]. I mainly focused on discussing film techniques as this was the most interesting to my listeners and me. What I want to give people is practical support and advice. During that editing process, of course, things were condensed and this is where the problems arose.
One thing I was sure about was that John never intended to criticize Ridley. It does seem that bringing separate comments closer together might have made things ambiguous if people chose to take things out of context.
Mathieson says twenty minutes were cut between his laziness comment and what he said about multi-camera set-ups. The two topics were not related in the full conversation:
“Because the digital stuff doesn’t cost anything, but so you shoot a lot. And I saying that is that, and I said, this was the quote. I said, the industry, it’s really lazy. Lazy and sloppy are not two words I would ever put with this gentleman of a certain age and genius.
But if you slide out – and you can hear it – you slide out a paragraph and put it right next to, oh, let’s talk about Rid and multi cameras. And he edits the piece down to 30 minutes… I could hear the blip of the sound. I said, well, that wasn’t said against that. That was probably said maybe 20 minutes later. However, this is what has risen to the surface. And I’m deeply regretful of that.”
Mathieson said he has spoken to Scott about this:
“I said, ‘well this has happened,’ and he said, ‘Oh, God, what the f—k? He said you’ve got to be careful.’
Gladiator II remains in cinemas now.