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“I Keep My Local 600 Card So I Can Operate”: Rachel Morrison on The Fire Inside
Ryan Destiny on the set of The Fire Inside (Sabrina Lantos © 2024 Amazon Content Services LLC.) When she competed in the 2012 Summer Olympics, Claressa Shields became the first American woman to win a gold medal in boxing. It was the culmination of a lifelong struggle to make her way as a fighter. Growing up on the edge of poverty in Flint, Michigan, Shields trained with coach Jason Crutchfield in a long-term collaboration. Nicknamed “T-Rex” for her short arm span, she was the subject of the 2015 documentary T-Rex: Her Fight for Gold.
In 2019, Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rachel Morrison chose a project about Shields for her feature directing debut. Working from a script by Barry Jenkins, she had shot for two days when the production was shut down due to COVID-19. Morrison resumed shooting in 2022 with cinematographer Rina Yang. Ryan Destiny and Brian Tyree Henry played Shields and Crutchfield. Although the film covers a half-dozen of Shields’ fights, the story takes an unusual turn for a sports biopic. Instead of ending with her Olympic victory, the script explores what happens when athletes realize that winning alone isn’t enough.
Morrison spoke with Filmmaker at this year’s EnergaCAMERIMAGE, where The Fire Inside screened in competition. The movie opens theatrically December 25.
Filmmaker: How did this project become your feature directing debut?
Morrison: After shooting Mudbound and Black Panther, I was reading a lot of scripts. I’m a storyteller first and foremost. I was job-agnostic, looking to either shoot or direct. The scripts I read weren’t taking me forward. Most Marvel films aren’t Black Panther, and most indie films aren’t Mudbound. They all felt like a step backwards or sideways. [Producer] Elishia Holmes and Barry Jenkins brought me a feature script based on the T-Rex documentary. Because it dealt with all the hurdles she faced outside of the ring, as well as her victories, the script resonated with me as a story that needed to be told, one I could be additive to. Sometimes with biopics I wonder, “Why are we making a movie about someone we already know everything about?” The fact that I didn’t know Claressa’s story is precisely why I felt it should be adapted into a feature. It was a chance to upend the traditional sports movie. Most inspirational sports films end with “the win.” The heart of The Fire Inside is what happens after.
Filmmaker: Did you collaborate with Jenkins on the script?
Morrison: Barry’s writing leaps off the page and was a gift from the outset. We worked together with Claressa to make sure the emotional complexities were accurate and got her blessing in depicting the script’s more sensitive moments. We also worked to sharpen the structure. I was very fortunate to have reference points ranging from the documentary to a collection of photographs of Claressa from that period. I spent a good amount of time in Flint to really get a feel for the place that shaped Claressa’s life and story.
Filmmaker: The COVID-19 pandemic was one of the problems you had to deal with early on.
Morrison: We started this project in 2020 with Katelin Arizmendi as DP. We shot two days and then the world shut down. When we came back, Kate was on another project. I had admired [DP] Rina [Yang]’s work. I thought her heightened lighting sensibility would add something interesting to my tendency toward naturalism.
Filmmaker: What did the pause do to the script?
Morrison: We resumed shooting with MGM/Amazon two years after the pandemic. In those two years, inflation made everything more expensive: materials, location fees, crew rates. But our budget remained the same. As a result, I had to pre-cut the movie. Any scene that wasn’t holding the movie together, as well as some of our bigger set pieces, had to go. As a DP, I remember shooting things where I thought, “No way this makes the cut,” wishing all the while we could give that time to other scenes. Here, as director, I had to make hard choices before principal photography. At least that meant homing in on the scenes that mattered the most.
Filmmaker: Was there something you weren’t willing to sacrifice?
Morrison: I had to advocate very hard to shoot in Flint. That was my one battle. My advice to all filmmakers is to pick your battles. If you ask for a Technocrane every day on an indie, nobody’s going to give it to you. But if you say, “I need it for this scene and this is why,” you stand a chance of getting it. In my case, Flint was the hill I was willing to die on. It’s this beautiful, resilient, irreplicable community, and I felt it was essential to shoot Flint for Flint. By making that the only thing I wouldn’t take no for an answer, we managed to get back to Flint at the end of principal photography
Filmmaker: The cast changed as well.
Morrison: Yes, we got my dream actor, Brian Tyree Henry, to play Claressa’s coach, Jason Crutchfield. He’s so good that he elevates everyone around him, not just the leads but the secondary roles. Even the kids in the gym levelled up in his presence. The other thing the delay did was give Ryan Destiny more time to train, which was such a blessing. I trained as well. I started boxing when I took this job because I wanted to understand what if felt like to hit and be hit, and how to best express that filming within the ring. A lot of stunt choreographers want to make every punch look cool and exciting, instead of focusing on the story and its emotional stakes. Every fight in our film had to communicate a different narrative point. Being able to get in the ring with the camera helped me communicate Claressa’s experiences, such as what it’s like to fight in a foreign country far from your coach or the specific challenges when your opponent’s reach is longer than your own. The fact that Ryan and I both knew boxing by the time we shot was incredibly helpful. Ryan does every one of her stunts in the ring. I’m so damn proud of her.
Filmmaker: As a DP yourself, how to you collaborate with your cinematographer?
Morrison: I know from years of shooting that I never do my best work on a short leash. I tried my best to give Rina the room to do things her way. There were definitely moments where I was chewing my nails, thinking, “This is not how I would do it.” I had to let go of that and focus on the performances.
Filmmaker: Did you operate?
Morrison: If it’s handheld in the ring, or a handheld emotional moment with the actors, it’s probably me. That would have been the hardest thing for me to give up. I keep my Local 600 card so I can operate. I always try to talk to my operators to let them know it’s not personal, it’s this dance I want to do that’s all about intuition. Had Rina been inclined, I might not have operated. But she likes live-mixing at the dimmer board, so it felt like a very symbiotic collaboration.
Operating is so instinctual. You need to be able to feel what is going to happen. Nobody knew the story better than I did. To be in the moment with Ryan, or with Brian, was everything. Operating also allows me to live direct. Rather than calling cut, having a sidebar with the actors, and then having to ramp up to get back into it, we can stay in the moment, make adjustments as we dance together.
Filmmaker: You do her first big fight as a oner, taking the camera from outside the gym into the ring.
Morrison: We have so many fights, and they’re front-loaded, right? We basically tell an inspirational sports movie in the first two-thirds of the script. I felt the best thing we could do was keep the fights distinct—both the locations and the shooting style.
The tricky thing with oners is when you’re showing two people, you can’t ever have eyes on both of them. You’re always leaving one for the other. In that first fight, you don’t need to know anything about the opponent. We only needed to communicate that five years have passed and Claressa has become a force. I thought a oner would work well here because the audience stays with Claressa as she dominates and lands every punch.
We used a Mōvi gimbal on a crane. As we extended out over the crowd and into the ring, two grips held the ropes open so our Mōvi camera operator could climb into the ring and detach the camera from the crane. The camera continued to move with Claressa while the crane retracted, and the crowd folded in around it to cover it up. Of course it didn’t go exactly to plan, giving me a momentary heart attack. It worked during rehearsals, but on the day, I could feel the camera detaching from the crane on every take. I had no backup plan; I hadn’t imagined anything except a oner. Ultimately, we realized that the magnet on the crane was too strong. A piece of scotch tape fixed it.
Filmmaker: How did you work with actors? For example, Ryan Destiny is a relative newcomer, while Brian Tyree Henry is a veteran performer.
Morrison: You discover pretty quickly that some actors have their best takes early, and others like to build up to things. Both Ryan and Brian are very generous and flexible. They had confidence in my vision, just like I had confidence in their instincts. I try to meet each actor with where they are and support them. I think probably my strength, maybe the thing that has had so many directors push me to direct, is that I care. I really invest. I have a lot of empathy and a strong bullshit detector.
Filmmaker: You have an intense scene where Claressa decides to leave Jason. Can you talk about capturing that? Were you using two cameras?
Morrison: No, this film was predominately single camera. I think a consistent thing about my work is that it’s subjective, experiential. To do that, it’s all about the eyeline. There’s only one angle that feels emotionally connected to the moment. In my experience, that’s often in close on a relatively wide lens. It’s dynamic and helps ground the audience in the world. I think we broke that scene into two sections so the actors could really live in their emotions.
Filmmaker: But you had to get them to those emotions first, before you started shooting.
Morrison: That’s the scene that got Ryan the role. She brought that level of performance to her audition. All I had to do was not get in her way. The Fire Inside is a feature with a lot of ups and downs. You can’t have somebody cry in every scene, right? You don’t always know what is going to be the lowest low, so I tried to modulate and play with the material. We probably did one take where we went too far and another where we underplayed the emotions, made them more a subtext than a release. Ryan did have quite a few emotional scenes. We had to choose in the edit which tears to keep and which to let go of.
Filmmaker: What was your experience editing?
Morrison: My editor, Harry Yoon, is a creative genius when it comes to both story and character. He’s also one of the most empathic people I know, which was perfect for this film where my specific goal is for the audience to walk a mile in Claressa’s shoes. I loved the process of fine-tuning and strengthening the cut together. That said, unlike many films, ours wasn’t a “choose your own adventure” because so much had been pared down before we began. Our assembly cut basically is the movie. But the score and a tightened pace made all the difference in the edit.
Filmmaker: So many factors in the film determine the story’s emotions. Did you have music in mind when you were filming? Or did you know what the music would be?
Morrison: No, I didn’t. Actually, that’s probably where I learned the most. Working with composer Tamar-kali, I had to communicate in a language I didn’t speak. I had a very broad sense of something that blended a modern and traditional score. A score that echoed the visuals rather than telling people what to feel. I’m really proud of Tamar’s final score. Harry Yoon did an incredible job with temp tracks in the original cut, laying the groundwork for what would be our score. I worked with music supervisor Mandy Mamlet on the needle drops, which moved between diegetic songs and choices that were more tone-poems than literal. I want to add that this film is meant to be seen on the big screen. Of course as a cinematographer, that’s always been important to me. After working through post, now I realize that the sound design is such a big part of these immersive and communal experiences.
Filmmaker: Did you test screen?
Morrison: Yes, which I was okay with because I made this film for an audience. I was eager to hear what they felt. Thankfully, we killed it in our first test, so we barely needed to change the cut. One thing I learned was that viewers actually wanted more information about what happened to Claressa and Jason in later years. We initially had two cards with chyrons, but added four more to bring viewers up to date. I’m so happy about those changes because in a full theater, it’s a real lean-in moment. I’ve attended screenings where the final card gets rousing applause.
Speaking of changes, there are more “artistic” versions of the trailer and TV spots promoting the film, but they didn’t test as well as the straightforward commercial versions. I could have been precious and dug in, but it is more important to me to reach as wide an audience as possible. Ideally we aren’t just preaching to the choir, but inviting a broader swath of viewers to live another life for a few hours.
Filmmaker: Can you say what’s next?
Morrison: I think I will direct again for my next long-form project, because I did love being able to see the vision through from beginning to end. I’m looking for a project that is additive in the universe, and that I can be additive to; something that, if it became five years of my life, I’d still be fighting for it. Most scripts I read don’t feel like that. They might be good, but not right for me, or I feel they’ve been made seven times before. I’m searching for something that feels different enough that I’m not repeating myself, but a project that’s also worth the time. Making a movie takes me away from my family for so long, so it better count.
