Camera movement

To achieve this camera move, we put the camera on the overhead crane that was permanently installed above this laser. Actually, this is a series of lasers, all of which focus down to one point. I think that... And it's for fission or fusion. I think it's for fusion. That crane helped construct this laser, and I think was rated at something like 5 tons, which was just enough to lift our 70-millimeter cameras.

27:54 · jump to transcript →

hooking, rigging this huge chain that was supported by a crane out of shot, getting the basic shots done and getting out of there before we got nicked. In fact, somebody, I think, had paid Sergeant Dunn at the local police station some money to stay away. Once it started moving, we were in the studio pulling the thing along, pushing bricks and pieces out. And these

6:05 · jump to transcript →

Pretty good. Yeah, yeah. That was nicely directed, too, Alex. You had that floating camera through there. That's right. It was all handheld, wasn't it? Robbie did a lot of handheld. Yeah. A lot of handheld. In that sequence. Check this out. They go to see Mr. Humphreys. Poor guy. And who's that in the background?

54:53 · jump to transcript →

I mean, it's just really well done. Look at this. We didn't actually have a crane, but I think this was a tall ladder with the camera mounted on top of it. Next movie, I'm going to put a crane on. We are the champions. The perfect ending to this movie. It's probably been copied several times since, but I think we were the first to use it. What about us, huh? You're jocks. Go live in the gym.

1:25:07 · jump to transcript →

So can I just say something about this long tracking shot? The reason we did this was because there was lots of scenes in the screenplay showing life in the brothel, which we couldn't film because of scheduling and budgeting. So the reason we did this shot in this way was to get a sense of the brothel, the customers, the girls,

2:21 · jump to transcript →

Gary Goddard

you know, handheld camera. And we're going to have them battle with this color wheel behind them with the atmosphere. And this also, what you're looking at right now, is a rig that we did where he brings down one of those statues. That was a last-minute ad because we were actually shortening the battle in the room. We had to have something spectacular happen. So we said, let's knock one of those things, have him push one of those down. Okay, but back to the final battle, which is coming up. Taking the room down to dark, then using a color wheel...

1:33:33 · jump to transcript →

Know it by rote. This was an interesting location, and it allowed us to look in in all the rooms. And so as we begin to just continue to dolly with it, we can sneak the dialogue from the upcoming scene kind of distant and then let it start to impact more on the scene, almost like it was dreamlike for a moment.

10:05 · jump to transcript →

Richard Donner

If I remember right... I'm not sure, but I think in one of these scenes, we pull back and the guy on the camera's me.

58:44 · jump to transcript →

Paul M. Sammon

Robo 2 really was much more expensive than the first one. It was about $35 million to produce. And what you're seeing now is a tracking shot that kind of introduces you to the wildness of downtown, supposedly Detroit. This really is downtown Houston about three in the morning. We shot downtown for weeks, just blowing up everything. And of course, locking over bag ladies at cans.

3:29 · jump to transcript →

Michael Mann

for something quite attainable and beautiful right in their midst, which is a better material life for them and their children. This is the fort battle. The shot that we're looking at is actually one continuous crane shot going from the first French battery across the field to an entire second French battery.

35:17 · jump to transcript →

So you're getting the action Stallone, you're getting the comedy Stallone. Well, Stallone hadn't done, had he done any comedy before this, Dan? Well, he had done some unfortunate comedies like Rhinestone with Dolly Parton. Oh, right. That's why he was probably nervous about the movie getting too comic at times. Now he's in his own habitation here, which doesn't have any of the...

1:12:37 · jump to transcript →

You know, a handwritten page, nobody reads it. It's sticking on the back of the dolly or on their chairs and nobody pays any attention to it. But you give people pictures, you know, you give them a comic strip, you know, and they can digest the day's work in a heartbeat. You know, we're shotless, they've got to think about it. It's a great, great document to have on the set for the whole crew so they know what they're looking at for that particular day. Would you like to get pie after you see a good movie? Yeah, I'd love to get pie after a movie.

8:08 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, we had an overhead crane that took the weight of Michael T off of Tom so that he could, in fact, appear as if he was lifting him and got it set to a weight that he could hold. And it would actually track with him so he could run carrying Bubba. And then, of course, we removed the wire later. You got shot.

55:30 · jump to transcript →

this uh hot air balloon shot it's more complicated than it really looks in this bucket they actually have them hanging from a crane and it's kind of you know moving around so they are actually moving and swirling and stuff um but there's also a lot of like the second unit stuff is in there it's composited in there there are several different elements here um

1:39:38 · jump to transcript →

Alexander Payne

Lisa and I were destined to be together. Of all the people on the planet who had ever lived, somehow we'd found each other. It was like a miracle. All this stuff here is shot on 16mm handheld, those two previous shots of them on the swing and, of course, these two things. I don't know why, but in thinking about Tammy and her sense of love and her girlfriends, I always just thought that

28:17 · jump to transcript →

Yes, if you don't mind talking about it. Oh, no, not at all. I'm not ashamed. I didn't say you should be. No, we met conventionally as doctor and patient. How did he end up at your house? I invited him, of course. Now, interestingly enough, we shot the flashback sequences on a small handheld kind of consumer DV camera.

19:14 · jump to transcript →

the top of the pyramid, and then the dirigible is actually on a crane and lowered in. There is some CG work done on it. The top of the balloon is enhanced there, but parts of this are actual sets. This was always fun. I just love getting actors in positions like that, where you have to put the actor, you know, in the movie.

1:59:18 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

It's also kind of a thing from old movies. I mean, the one that made me think of putting the names like this on the screen was... Death Takes a Holiday, which has this opening sequence that does this. I think theirs is a big dolly shot, but it's the same kind of idea.

7:24 · jump to transcript →

We shot this scene the same day that we shot Scott and Cooper seeing Big Ben and Parliament. That was the morning, and then we came here and it was about to rain for about three straight hours. It was just a race. Every day was a sprint. - We were just rushing. When you're shooting London in the morning and Berlin in the afternoon with a camera crew move... And the really pretty shot is that first shot, the crane down, which is a really pretty shot of establishing them in the square. But in this case, we knew things were gonna be really tough in terms of time. And I remember David Eggby really wanted that shot, but we had to get in and get the close-ups. That was the carrot on the stick. We were just like, by not doing that really pretty crane shot till last, boy, he was just moving everybody as quick as he humanly could to get that crane shot, which was very fun to see. Not that he didn't always move people quickly. Here's another... If you look at deleted scenes, here's another spot you should look at because there's a... If you like the Creepy Italian Guy, or as you call him, the Train Homo, you will love this scene. We went from... In an earlier version, we went from Berlin to Scotty saying, "Okay, she's doing this Summer at Sea thing. We have to go to Summer at Sea." And you can see Summer at Sea there. That is Summer at Sea. - Originally, this shot we used to get them into Summer at Sea... Instead, we cut here and their backpacks mysteriously disappear. So, they go to Summer at Sea and who should be the leader of Summer at Sea? The Creepy Italian Guy. They get the information they need, but Jamie has to pay a price in flesh. Check that out if you're interested. But, again, when we actually then went from... It's a really funny scene and yet, just in the body of the movie at this point, you've had such big laughs with Hitler Kid and at that point you set up "We gotta go to Rome," going right to the Vatican and letting people know, "Here comes the end of the movie." Also seeing Mieke, seeing: "Here's the prize." Yes. Here's our ticking clock, here's the end. It just made the back end of the movie work really well. The other thing too, as you're covering stuff... When we were shooting this scene, we're shooting him, we're shooting the guard, we're shooting the three other kids standing there. Every little moment here, like every time Jamie spoke to him, there were nice little reactions. And in our early cuts, you start trying to play all these little moments and, ultimately, you're playing too many moments. 'Cause the big ones are right here. - Yeah. This is what you wanna get to. Jacob doing the retard stuff was awesome. Like that. By the way, if you look at that again, the columns in the background weren't there. That was Kevin Blank adding that. Yeah, we're at the outside of a church. And now we're in a museum in Prague. This is the Natural History Museum in Prague. A gorgeous building. I think it's just called the National Museum. I think there's just one museum. - It's everything. And here's our really cool shot. Peter McCaffrey, our camera operator... This we enjoyed 'cause it's one piece. This was the one time he was able to stretch his muscles and then... But he didn't. He clearly did this blindfolded with one hand. He's working this huge crane, he's spinning two cranks. He could've been eating a sandwich and playing piano at the same time, for all we were challenging him. This was something we talked about, one of the few things where coming in we had an idea of what we wanted, this sort of multiple levels of going in different directions.

1:10:24 · jump to transcript →

And also that shot, we had a gigantic crane. Like 80 feet, yeah. Ridiculous. And Betty Okina, who was... Olympic gymnast. Bronze medalist. Yeah. Had to jump off the crane. And yet the most dangerous thing that happened to Betty in the entire film was when she was stung by a wasp. Yeah.

1:19:04 · jump to transcript →

I mean, one thing is getting the idea, but executing it's another. Shot required placing a 100-foot crane on a very rickety wooden pier. In the original script, we got to see Yuri's childhood in Ukraine. Ten-year-old Yuri comes up with the idea to pretend to be Jewish to escape the Soviet Union. But that part of the story had to be cut for budget reasons.

4:37 · jump to transcript →

you know, nine months over various weekends in New York City. And every time we went out there and we had a shot that had deer in it, we had to have our visual effects supervisor push around this little deer we named Dolly on this cart with wheels. And so it was always amusing to see him running up and down Park Avenue with this stuffed deer. This is our only blue screen sequence. Our only exterior blue screen sequence. Well...

5:22 · jump to transcript →

This was expensive, a very expensive camera crane here. And here's the thing that you added, which is not in the script, this suitcase that Lucky is carrying around all the time. It is explained eventually what's inside it, but it's not in the script. I thought that

1:10:41 · jump to transcript →

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 →