Yes, we wrote ‘Nickel Boys’ with POV in mind, but it went further and deeper than that

In producing RaMell Ross’ debut documentary, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” I came to appreciate the extraordinary patience he’d acquired in making images, which allows the camera to act as an extension of consciousness. So when we read Colson Whitehead’s remarkable novel “The Nickel Boys,” which was offered to us by Plan B to adapt as a director-producer team, I found it organic to RaMell’s process — if daunting in practice — that he would propose the entire film be shot in what he calls the “sentient perspective,” which on the script page for simplicity’s sake, we referred to as “POV,” though it went further and deeper than that. How would the experience of entering someone else’s gaze also transform the way the other people in the film look back at — — us? These included actual archival images from and about the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, the real-life “reform school” that inspired Colson’s novel and the film’s story.