I'm the director of 'Just Mercy.'

This is a scene between Walter McMillian.

Played by Jamie Foxx, and Herbert Richardson,

played by Rob Morgan.

And they are in cells on death row in Alabama.

They share a wall.

They're directly next to each other.

And one of the really interesting things

that I learned from speaking with Anthony Ray Hinton,

who was on death row in Holman Prison

for 30 years for a crime he did not commit,

was the camaraderie and relationships

that they had between jailmates that

were completely based on conversations

they were having without being able to see each other.

Bryan Stevenson said in his book that you cannot really

fully understand a problem unless you allow yourself

to get very close to it.

And that was something that we were

playing with with the camera, was leading up

to this very scene.

The cameras started off wider on these characters.

And this was the scene where we actually bring the camera

as close as possible to both Walter McMillian and Herbert

Richardson.

And I mean, you'll see how close we are.

Their eyes are in focus.

Their nose is out of focus.

And the camera was literally a couple inches

from their faces."

"In and out."

[BREATHING DEEPLY]

"Now close your eyes."

"Our DP, Brett Pollock, was really

wanting to shoot all of these jail cells scenes

as close to reality as possible.

So in this scene in particular,

there really is just the light source

that's coming in from outside the jail cell, which

gives this kind of amber hue.

That is really going to be a big contrast to the moment

when we go outside through Walter McMillian's escape

vision in his mind that takes him back

to the moment in the beginning of the movie

when he is out in the forest and looking up at the trees.

To capture the performances of this scene,

we actually shot with two cameras

running simultaneously, with Jamie Foxx in one cell

and Rob Morgan in the other--

which was very helpful for a scene like this,

because it was quite loose.

And it allowed the two actors to really be in it

and respond to each other.

And both sides of the conversation were captured.

So we didn't have to do too many editing

tricks for this scene."

"I don't want you to think about nothing else.

Just keep your mind on that.

Everything gonna be aight."