Camera movement

Tom Hooper

help build up the stamina he'd need to sing day in day out on a shoot. And this was our master close-up that Zac Nicholson shot on the Steadicam. And apart from one cut to a wide shot, it's all the same take, take 16. One of the challenges of shooting live music with live accompaniment is that

12:25 · jump to transcript →

Tom Hooper

a platform on a crane which then whizzed him about 70 foot into the air so it was quite precarious for Zac because he had to climb onto a platform which immediately lifted off so the timing had to be perfect. The end of that shot is then embedded into a visual effects shot which is based on a helicopter plate of Gourdon, the French town and this Oxfordshire church is inserted onto this mountaintop but the mountain is created in CGI and we re-project photos

14:49 · jump to transcript →

Tom Hooper

I mean, I have three cameras running on the song. The original master I planned was a slow track in from a medium shot to a close-up over the length of the song. And for a long time in the edit, we kept this tracking shot in. And I remember one day Eddie Redmayne came in, who's been a friend ever since Elizabeth I, when we worked together, and I showed him I Dreamed a Dream, and he was knocked out, but he said, why aren't we using the big close-up that he'd seen in the teaser trailer? And Melanie, my editor, tried the big close-up in, and...

28:52 · jump to transcript →

And this was actually, again, this is a set built by Jim Bissell. This was all on a stage at Leavesden Studios. And I think we only had four days to shoot this entire sequence. And that's where the decision to go handheld played into it. Usually I like to shoot in a pretty formal style, but handheld was the one way we could move with real speed to shoot the sequence. And one of the things that's very important to me about handheld is that you don't try to emphasize the...

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the use of handheld. It's kind of minimizing the shakiness of the camera. But most of the shots within the sequence are handheld. And that character, Venter, is an actor who came in. There's only going to be one scene. Yeah, he was supposed to die after he hit his head on that pipe. And he did that fantastically. He sent a video.

13:56 · jump to transcript →

And we scrambled and... Yes. And I had... You did a great job. Simon did a great job with this stuff. Oh, he was just one of... The timing of this was doing all this with a steadicam on an active train platform. Because when we went back, we couldn't have the same control of the platform. And this was the very first shot on the movie that I designed. And they're very helpful to just give it to us, like, within hours. City of Vienna was incredible. I tolerated a lot. Look at this shot. That was the first shot of the film I designed. It was standing on there and said...

26:51 · jump to transcript →

So here's an example of what we call the gray point of view, this drift through the house that had these nodal pans, you know, which were floaty but somehow precise. And I stabilized all of these shots because, you know, when you shoot with a Steadicam, you get a natural, you do get a bit of shake. And so we try to make them even more perfect by stabilizing them in post. And we did have earlier sequences that had versions of that kind of moving through the house.

38:46 · jump to transcript →

You know, cinematically, it's interesting when you try to do these slow creeping shots versus handheld shots and what those feel like and how those mean. And this was, you know, it was always sort of choosing your time to which one was most appropriate to use and what it would mean. And once again, a live conversation, both actors were present that are talking to her on the phone. And then we get into this montage here, this sort of, you know, it's the obligatory, you know, web search.

43:43 · jump to transcript →

but still do it on this very, very rapid schedule. So here, once again, you know, very first person point of view and this, you know, all handheld camera all the way through this. And, you know, part of the idea was, you know, the dogs, the progression of dogs barking in the neighborhood. You know, as we learned from JK that, you know, the dogs keep them up at night, you know, when they, the greys come around. And so here we are, we have our first jump scare of the sequence.

47:21 · jump to transcript →

Let's not do it as something that's just going to get cut out on a DVD. And that dictated the entire emotional arc of the story. It really allowed that emotional arc that we were always talking about, which was how do we get, without compromising what mission is, build in more emotion. Emotion. You know, how do we take them and pull back who Ethan is, where he's at,

1:59 · jump to transcript →

And we were originally gonna have a crane that you were gonna get on and swing over. And when I was scouting that roof, I went, wait a minute, this looks like it's 10 feet away. Of course, everybody in London knows how ridiculous that is. And again, 360 degree geography. We started on that roof, this roof right here. This is where it happens. This is part two of a two-part shot that we stitched together. And Tom's ankle is broken. This is shot five months after. Here it is, this. This is the start. And here's where it happens.

1:34:06 · jump to transcript →

and what needed to be made clear. And also, we'd spent a couple of weeks in the editing room during the break. That's right, during the break. We had a hiatus. To go through how... We had a hiatus when Tom broke his ankle and it allowed us to cut... Time to cut working. Yeah. But what I love about a mission movie also is you could go cashmere, push in the computer screen, and then cut to these beautiful shots. This is actually, we're shooting in New Zealand for cashmere. There was a whole great scene that you wrote and shot

1:43:24 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

Well, the cameras we had, we used these Aaton cameras, which are Swiss, I think, and one very small camera in particular, the A-Minima, it's called. I mean, these are now all kind of, even now, these are sort of obsolete. But the A-Minimas, I think, were developed with the input of Jean-Luc Godard. And maybe they weren't finished in time for Godard to want to use them anymore. But I believe they come out of a collaborative process that was happening with the guy who owns Aatan. The way these cameras are operated, you don't put them on your shoulder, these little ones, they're underslung. You know, you hold them in your hand like a video camera. You hold them at chest level or even waist level, and you look down through the top of them like a Rolleiflex. Rolodex is another thing. And this was very good because many of the characters in our movie were short. They were 12-year-olds or younger, and it's hard to handhold scenes with someone who's down below you like that. But with this, it was at their eye level. We didn't do the whole movie with these cameras, but we used the Aaton system and it was great. And also, the slow-stock film that we used-- Slow-- The slow-speed Kodak film that we were using, in 16 mm, looks very, very close, almost identical to the fast 35 mm stock. And since we now do the transfers digitally, there's not like a blow-up where you get extra grain. It can look very-- You can get the real feeling of 16 mm, and you don't feel like you're kind of compromising it as you make it into a bigger projection. So anyway-- And that was all part of what went into the-- One aside, when you look at one of the little handheld films I shot on Moonrise, we're about to all get on a boat and go out. There's a moment at which Fran McDormand realizes that the boat is taking on some water, and she starts saying, "We're taking on water, we're taking on water. Does that matter?" And then Nate, our first AD, starts telling people to get out of the boat and try to sort it out. If you watch Wes in that moment, he's not only unconcerned about the safety of the children on the boat or anything like that, he immediately uses it as an opportunity to throw more crew off. As soon as he realizes, you can literally see the moment that a light bulb goes off in his brain and he realizes, "I now have a rationale for getting rid of more people." And he immediately starts saying, "Okay, so who can we lose?"

17:07 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

Well, we're talking about doing something hard. Doing something like a 180-degree whip pan on a moving dolly, for instance, is a hard thing. - Bob's specialty. Operating is a complicated and performative kind of action. You take it for granted. That, you know, after a few years, you don't even realize how hard some of the things that I'm asking him to do might be. But sometimes when you operate a shot, you suddenly become aware that if I mess this up, I've messed up all these different people's work all at once. There's so many people doing things at once. But, you know, most of Bob's job is about lighting. It's the balance of making a circumstance where you can get everything to happen together. And he's in tune with all of that. One big thing about the photography you probably talked about already is the choice to shoot it in 16 mm, which had a lot of effect on the look in terms of the weight of the cameras, the portability, and so on.

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Oh, we started watching the movie. - Yeah. This is cool. - Will she make it? Got her clothes on. One of the things that we were very keen on... ... that we wanted, was that we wanted.... We had this ambition... ... that the audience should have their first breath... ...after the first 10 minutes... ...when she gets dropped off the truck... ...which we will see. And when I was watching the premiere yesterday with my wife... ...when she get-- She: At exactly that spot and I felt, "Wow... ... this was exactly what we were aiming for." I think the audience was a little surprised too. We had the premiere last night so we got to watch... ... the movie with a big audience. But they were surprised at the level of violence of the movie. This is a tougher movie than the other movies. Selene is a lot more badass in this movie. She kills a lot of people. - Yeah. Went through a lot more buckets of blood too. A sign of the times, I suppose. Yeah, you'll wish you hadn't done that. This was one of the big scenes in the trailer... ... that we had shown Screen Gems right at the beginning. I love the little splat of blood hitting there. That was sweet. I repeat, full containment... No, there was buckets of blood. I mean, it's.... Violence Is an aesthetic I think that, I mean, goes a hundred years back. Yep. Have we actually done a body count in this? It's a lot. You know what? I did once. Did you? What'd it end up being? - I can't remember. Counting Lycans and humans. Yeah, dead-- Corpses. Now, this moment was an additional shoot moment. It was the first thing we sh... - Wes Bentley, yeah. It's the last and first... - The uncredited Wes Bentley. The first and the last... - This jump was the first thing we shot. First day of shooting. - Look at this boom here. There. That hit in that shot, was Alicia... ...our excellent stunt girl, who just smacked... It sounded like the worst sound I ever heard. It's like, "We killed the stunt double on the first shot." And then you said, "Let's go again." The first day of shooting went so well... ... that I walked away thinking, "God, this is gonna be an easy movie." Oh, my God! - You were wrong. I was wrong. It was so difficult. This was the toughest by far we've done. They're not supposed to be easy. No. - There's a direct correlation... ...between the amount of suffering to do a movie... ...and how well it turns out. We never did a film, like, with this big budget kind of thing... ...but I think you always end up in the same position, you know? You don't have enough money. You always... Imagination can always outrun money. Yeah. - Yeah. The 3D made it more complicated too. Yeah, the 3D really-- You know, nobody had really done it. You know, how to plan it and how to shoot it and.... This is where we want people to breathe. Yeah, here. Here's brutalism again. - Yeah. I was talking with the cinematographer... ...ocott Kevan, last night and... Who did a great job. - He did a great job. And the person... I introduced him to my daughter. My daughter said, "Was this your first 3D movie?" He said, "No, my second. I made all my mistakes on the first one... ...So this one I could get right." Yeah, he was the only guy kind of who had done it. Yes. - And he kept telling us: "It'll take a long time." I remember-- Gary, you said: - It did. "If we go down the Amazonas, it'd be nice... ... to have someone who's been there." Done that trip. That was true. Scott was really there. - Yeah. He was great. But it's also-- It has been very... ...weird. - First shot of Kate. This was the first shot of Kate. Yeah. - First night. That terrible night when it would not stop raining. This was one of those.... - There's a gale right now. When the duck flew into the light? - Yeah. It was a duck who came from the sky... ...and landed in the middle of the set. The camera broke down about four times. Yeah. No, just shooting 3D was a weird experience in that sense... ... that we hadn't done it before and all the rules that you get... ... from various people who has done it... ...Just turn out to be not true or.... - Bullshit. Total bullshit. I don't know if the Red Epic that we used, the camera... ... kind of discarded some of them so it actually works now... ...and it's also.... You have to realize you're telling a story... ... you're not doing a 3D ride. Although this movie is like a ride but... No, but I think what.... True, because... .all these people that we talked about, they were technicians... ...and not filmmakers or storytellers. So they speak about the perfection of everything... ...and that's not really interesting, perfection... ...ecause what you go for is emotion, and emotion is not always perfect. It's also... You know, 3D is in its infancy. People really don't know the rules. When we took those classes... ... there'd been like six movies made and so people didn't know. Half of them were not real 3D, either. - Correct. Where you actually were using binocular cameras... ...to shoot the entire movie, which we did. I don't think any... There wasn't a rule they gave us... ...that we didn't break. - No. I mean, it was... - No. Everything. This is that hybrid POV, as we Call it. It's when Kate starts seeing through.... She thinks she sees through Michael's eyes... ...but it's actually India's. Eve, her daughter. This is so hard, I think, to decide as a filmmaker... ...when you do this. What it should look like? - No. Not technically, but I'm saying the suspension of disbelief... ...of is it Michael or not, and.... We didn't know... All the marketing now you've seen... ... you know, It's all out that she has a daughter in this one... ...which, you know, when we were planning this.... Hopefully that would be the secret. It's gonna be a surprise, yeah. - "Wow, she has a daughter." But.... And I think what helps us Is that we... - Michael Ealy, by the way. Michael Ealy. - Appearance of Michael Ealy. What helps us is the pace that we had to this. You just move so fast that, you know... ... you don't leave time for the mind to think that much. But it's.... Yeah, it's interesting. One of the scenes we shot here is outside in Vancouver. Vancouver-- When we heard we're shooting Underworld... ...and we're shooting it in Vancouver... ...we thought that was pretty strange because it's not gothic. But as Bjorn was talking about... ...when we found the neo-Goth and the brutalism... ...Vancouver Is fantastic. - We'll start counting... ...how many times that word comes. - You do that. It might be even more people than die. Yeah. A couple of words about Kate.... She's a movie star and a really, really good actress. Sometimes that's not the same thing. But she is, and she's very fun to work with. And she... You know, she's British, she always... Theo James. - Theo James. Very witty, yeah. - Young English actor making his... Who's also extremely funny. - Those damn Brits. Yeah. He's so funny. And you're around people who are gorgeous and funny... . It takes its toll on you. Yeah, it doesn't go together usually, yeah. No, and you just stand there in the middle and talking really bad English. I love this shot we did with Stephen. I remember we were shooting it, he was really somewhere else. He was... That was a scene we added after we had started shooting. It was Gary's scene. - That was my idea. We initially had a scene outside of here that l.... I remember seeing this location. I thought it was beautiful... ...but I couldn't wrap my head around a desk being in an exterior atrium... ...so I was struggling with that, but I'm sure glad we did it. I think it looks beautiful. I think you said when you saw it, "It's outside?" It started raining. - "It's outside?" And it was freezing cold. You remember how cold it was? Oh, my God, it was freezing. - God. This is the second... - Then we said: "We have all this concrete and it's freezing cold. Let's get water everywhere. That'll make it really comfortable." This is day one. Day zero, we did the jump we saw before. This is day one where it was full-on, all teams... ...SO this is the first scene that we shot of the whole film. And this shot was actually blown up. We had shot it wider, but we were able to push in on it. We did that with an enormous number.... One of the beauties of using the Red Epic camera... ...was the ability to push in and resize afterwards... ...1N postproduction. That's 175 percent. - Yeah. One of the things I believe that Mans and Bjérn should discuss... ...because we experienced it our first day of shooting... .IS that they are slightly unorthodox in terms of a directorial team. Slightly? They alternate the days they're shooting. So the first day, I believe it was Bjérn, right? You were directing the first day... ...and then Mans would direct the second day. And so, you know, you guys may wanna enlighten the audience... ...as to your procedure. - This was Mans. The prior one in the corridor, I did. I can't remember, but we always have the producer flip a coin... I did. I remember I flipped a coin. Yeah, flipped a coin and whoever gets the tails... ...whatever we decide, begins the day. The thing is, when I'm directing, Bjorn's my best buddy... ...as we Call it, and he doesn't do anything... ...except helping me. Nobody's allowed to talk to him. - Wait. We'll miss Wes getting thrown through the window. This is a totally reshot scene. - Yeah. We had another scene that was... - Just not working. No, it was a bit of a disaster. We got the opportunity to reshoot this, and I love this scene. I love it too. - It's great. This whole spider-webbing window thing.... That was actually Len Wiseman's idea of having him... ...be pushed through the window as it spider-webbed behind him. Yeah, we had.... Yeah. Fantastic idea. - Yeah, great shot. In the background, you see he's got little stuffed animals... ...because we wanted him to be a tinker... ...because he's been tinkering with her... What? I never saw those stuffed animals. I love this shot. I love this. It's too short. - Way too short. Yeah. It's way too short. You know, if you're starting to do movies or anything.... Please listen up, because Bjérn is saying something important. If you get into doing green-screen stuff, stay on it longer... ...because the visual effects will come in and you'll go: "Why the hell didn't we stay longer?" You had 36 frames of tail handle that you didn't use. So it's... So there. - Bollocks. I did not see that. - The famous.... Larz. Thank you, Larz. This is a 300-pound dummy in steel. Oh, God. Nothing.... I mean... Larz is the visual effects... - Special effects. Special effects. We thought, "There's no way. That's not gonna smash the car." Larz was like, "It's gonna smash the car." It did. - It smashed it great. Larz was right. It worked. And I love this shot of the camera pulling up... ...and catching Theo there. - Yeah. SO we are boosting up the mystery here. Theo, who is this guy. - The mystery man. And hopefully you don't know that he's a Vampire yet. He could be anyone, probably a human. Yeah, that was one of the challenges, as well, with the introducing. We introduce Michael Ealy, who plays Sebastian... ...and we have introduced David. We had introductions of a character called Quint, which is... Love this knife. - Yeah. The Uber-- Who was a Lycan, but it was taken out. Because there were too-- Yeah. Kris. - Kris Holden. Brilliant. - Brilliant guy, brilliant actor. It was taken out because there were too many people presented... ...and he gets presented after the car chase... ...and we only see him once. I'm not sure if that was perfect. In hindsight, maybe we should have. - But it's tough. That's... This is a movie where there's only one character... ... left over from other films. Every character has to be introduced. At a certain point, it's a struggle... ...trying to figure out ways to do it without overwhelming the audience. So we just caught a glimpse of the lower Lycans. And one of the things that we really loved in this one... ...was that we could expand the mythology and the universe... ...by inventing new creatures. And we liked the idea that they have been living in the sewers. There's one now. Yeah. And, you know, we thought, you know.... Here we thought Gollum. We thought rabid dog. We thought puss-- Run... Is that what you call it? Puss? Pus. - Pus running. Yeah. Saliva. Fucking crazy in the head. Rabid crazy. That... - Syphilitic. We wanted to because there's... One of the most wonderful lines... .In the history of Underworld is: "You're acting like a pack of rabid dogs! And that, gentlemen, simply won't do." That Michael Sheen says in Underworld 7. And we said, well, let's turn them into those rabid dogs now. They-- You know, they have lived here underground for so long... ... that they actually became these rabid dogs. Yeah, we actually don't see these guys as being human anymore. They're just Lycans. - And they... They turned out beautifully, James. Really beautiful. - These are my favorite Lycans. I think if there is a part five, there should be just these guys. I love them, just those.... The horde. - Yes. Really sick. It was the first time we moved away from suits. We always relied on practical prosthetic suits... ...and this was the first. This and the Uber are the two creatures that are purely CG. The Uber was hard to cast, so we had to go CG. This is an important moment. I loved shooting this. - This is where Selene sees... ...this child for the first moment. Without realizing who it is. - Right. She thinks it's Michael. I remember when shooting it... - She expected to find Michael. Right. Exactly. And she was so beautiful, and she looks so scared. Vulnerable. - Yeah. And the whole thing here we set up, you know.... We're gonna reveal later in the van, when she rips the Lycan's head apart. Hopefully that works, because we set up this girl as weak... ...as we see here, and vulnerable and so on... ...but she is the daughter of Selene, which means the girl's got powers. She's got the kick-ass gene. - Her name is Eve... ...which is never pronounced. - No. It isn't? We never say it? - We never say it. She says, "I'm Subject 2. You're Subject 1." So we might give her another name if we want to for the next one. Eve is perfect, I mean. No, but I think Selene is so beautiful... ...because Selene means moon in Greek. Is that right? - Yeah. Selene means moon in Greek? - Don't you know your Greek? Apparently not. Good Lord. Yeah. So here's the car chase, as we Call it. And it is pretty much... ...on the money on every shot that we storyboarded... ...which is extremely rewarding for a director... ...to see that it pulls off. This is also a triumph of visual effects. Probably half of the scene it was pouring down rain... ...and shooting in 3D, which means you can't really shoot. Shooting in 2D. We shot most of it in 2D. Because you can't shoot in 3D, the rain hits the mirror. The half-silvered mirror that you use in a 3D rig. So this whole thing was pieced together... ... from very, very rudimentary pieces.

10:50 · jump to transcript →

I think a lot of all these shots of-- Just of India. lt makes me think of Turner. Like old Pre-Raphaelites, and so on. She looks so beautiful. So perfect. Also very fun with Charles Dance that... When we talked to Len... ...and said we would love to have Charles for this... ...e was our first choice... ...and we were very happy that he could do tt. And Len was like, "Oh, great! I wanted him for the other films as well." Because he's always thought of him as a perfect Underworld... ...actor. - Yeah. I think he's perfect. Now we don't have Bill Nighy anymore... ...because he's dead. - Yeah. We chopped his head off rather thoroughly. And even so, he kept coming back. - Yeah. But he can't come back anymore, I think. No. - No. Not at this time frame. - Never say never. So that's Kate's mother in the background there, which is.... I love the shot of this tic she gets in her face. That's me screaming, "Twitch, twitch! Twitch!" - It was great. It gets cut off a little bit by the wipe... ...but it was such a great detail. And then Selene... ...has an emotional moment. - Is crying. Yeah. And here we had.... There was.... Now we have this, but before, I think, until the very end... ...It was flashbacks more of him. Right. - Their history, kissing and so on. Originally, it wasn't supposed to be that underwater sequence. lt was supposed to be him in all his glory and beauty. But it actually works really well... ...because you've seen that piece before... ...and it works better as a memory. - I think so too. This was a wonderful time in the filming... ...because all of a sudden... ...we went from the cold exteriors of Vancouver... ...where it would rain every day. It continued to rain, but at least we were inside a studio. We were there in this set for... - A while. Yeah, two or three weeks. And I remember Mans said to me, and Bjorn, they said: "This is our favorite point in the movie." I think it was. Yeah. - When I think back to it. Every day you'd go to work, and you'd be in this pretty set. We were doing interesting things. It's actually where most of the performance... ...the acting, took place. - Yeah. Here, we have an actual dramatic scene. Yeah, but also, it felt like we actually controlled the 3D beast here. The camera lived on the crane the whole time. Yeah. It didn't control us. We knew it. We understood it. I can give courses. And we weren't standing around at night in the rain. Right. - Exactly. There's that physical comfort part of it. We had a subway train to contend with a little bit. Every fourth minute or something. The elevated train that went by every 15 minutes. But I mean, I just want to say a couple words about Kate. She's so great here and she's so focused. It's crazy. You talk very little to her. I think good direction is more about being than talking. And with her, knowing the role so well... ... you kind of say, "So this is kind of what we need for the scene." She knows exactly, and then it just happens. This is a beautiful shot. I love that shot. If you want to make a small, small change, it's... You can direct her like a surgeon... ...ecause you can do so small changes. And it's exactly what you're looking for. I'm happy actually that that scene stayed in the movie. Because it's not.... - Me too. Me too. Almost came out, but you're right, it is... This scene almost came out too, but I'm glad-- This was a oner that... Everybody thought this scene would go. I liked it. I really fought for it. I really loved it. - It's so creepy too. Yeah, but I think it's important, because this is about the little girl... ... realizing her new identity. And this is a teenage, you know, coming of age, and so on. This is the creepy stepfather. - This is an incredibly creepy scene. It's a beautifully staged shot. You've gotta have a few of those in the movie, right? He wants to kill her, and here he is being nice and.... He wants to absolutely wipe her off the face of the earth. Yeah. He despises her. I think one of the most common words I used, or we used... ...Was "contempt" and "despise" to actors. Those are two great words for actors. - Yeah. And she nails it. She nails it. - Oh, those eyes. It's funny, because she has to do a lot of acting in this film with her face... ...where she doesn't have a lot of lines to really chew on... ...but she really is able to do a tremendous amount... ... Just with facial expression.

34:30 · jump to transcript →

Matthew Vaughn

you'll see it's all, you know, it's a steadicam. And now we're hearing Big Daddy's theme, sort of more rock and roll. Let's see, three, four, same notes. It's Murphy, just, he's a genius. That's Nick at this point, that's Nick. Yeah, it's Nick, I mean, Nick's, he learned this in about a day as well, but it was fun.

1:07:24 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

We have-- We had so many great people to be around here. But, you know, also, by the way, with this scene here, I mean, a couple of funny things. We could talk about-- You know, the shot where they come driving up on the train there, where we're looking through the window, is shot on a little section of window and chairs that are on a dolly out in this snowy place. Then, in the wider shot, we have front projection that we've shot in this auditorium that we're using as a soundstage. Front projection based on-- Which-- Inspired by 2001. Using this old technique of front projection, which is not my idea.

19:43 · jump to transcript →

And as well, obviously, he's showing all the pieces that are going to play a part in the movie, right? But, I mean, you know, it's fascinating because what you just showed there was a tool room, an orderly tool room. And there's nothing intrinsically threatening about that, you know? I mean, it's tools that he's laid out to do jobs around the house. But the audience knows. Of course, in context. I think the audience sees that hammer. We push in into that hammer that we did.

20:49 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence

This was a nice little gag piece of furniture that Maria and her propmaker made. It's a little tough to light to see the black discs in the black drawer underneath. So, they gave Jo Willems quite a challenge. But worked out really well. You know, Jo and I have worked together for a really long time as well. I mean, we go back to the music video days, I think, you know, pre-2000, doing music videos and commercials. And then I went off to do movies, and he went off to do some movies, and so we went kinda separate ways for a while. And then started working together again on a couple of pilots. We did a couple of pilots together, and then I brought him in for the Hunger Games movies, and we really haven't stopped working together since. But we decided to do, really, a completely different approach to the movie, visually, this time. Again, we had done three Hunger Games movies over the course of five years, and there was sort of a similar feel to all of that. I mean, one of the things that I wanted to do was handheld, to sort of maintain some of the naturalism that was in the first one, but sort of more along the kind of style that I had done in something like I Am Legend where there's a hint of immediacy and naturalism, but it was actually still rather formal in terms of shot selection. The other thing that we did was use a lot of kind of medium-wide lenses up close on people, so we felt very intimate with people, but still maintained a little sense of geography in those movies. But a lot of those movies played in medium and close-up shots, or very wide, but a lot up close. And we wanted to be completely different with this movie. I mean, I wanted, quite honestly, for it to have a bit of a colder approach, a much more formal approach. I mean, the color palette was certainly gonna be different. The landscapes, and costumes, and characters were all gonna be completely different and much more grounded. But I wanted the cameras to be much more formal, too. So, locked down. So, either on dollies or Steadicam, or cranes, or Sticks. No handheld. But also to let things play a lot wider. I went in close much more rarely and let things play in wider shots for a lot longer. It was something that I'd wanted to do for a long time, but it was not an aesthetic that I had kicked off on the Hunger Games, and so I didn't want to kind of change that partway through. But it was an opportunity that I wanted to take advantage of here, and I'm really happy about it. You see it quite a lot in places like Sparrow School, and at the ballet, and things like that, that I really stay back and let things kind of play out in a much wider way. And also try not to cut quite as quickly as we may have. I wanted there to be, you know, an aspect of a slow burn to this movie. I wanted it to take its time a little bit, and not play just to the people who have attention deficit disorder.

1:34:37 · jump to transcript →