Composition & framing

at Shepperton Studios, or Pinewood Studios, actually, this one. Can you tell about the roller skating guys, Bob? Yeah, if you look deep in the background there, you'll see the guys in the fence just in the back there. They seem to be, I don't know, skating almost. One of the tricks that the visual effects company will be very unhappy that we pointed out to you. So we set this next shot up, and with all the burning flames, and it was...

3:53 · jump to transcript →

kind of painful setup of about four hours getting the shot together and then of course we warned everybody and said nobody moves it doesn't matter unless the rock himself catches on fire nobody moves and of course the minute the background caught on fire which it was supposed to do a Moroccan fireman with a pith helmet shiny silver pith helmet ran in so we had to remove him in post this sequence here was photographed

4:22 · jump to transcript →

And they walk right out onto sound stage six, Shepperton Studios. Or D, D stage. Now this shot here, the foreground element was shot in Morocco with the horses coming in there and the background is an ILM matte painting. And a lot of the reasons...

8:33 · jump to transcript →

It's sort of rotten, rotten blood inside that. Yeah, and he doesn't clean it very properly either. It's very basic. It's not so hygienical. No, it's not the issue here. In the background, you hear the weather report.

7:31 · jump to transcript →

this thing that in this movie horrible things happen, but it's always right in the corner of your eye. Somebody, if they just turned their head in the wrong or the right direction, they would have seen it. Somebody can always see what's happening, but nobody does. Yeah, it's very close. It's always close to others, the violence. And you could see the cars moving in the background too. It's very neat. Lighting here by Hoyte van Hoytema and the lighting crew.

9:25 · jump to transcript →

And we started off with a very complicated shot. This is made in one shot where Eli does the entrance in the film here outside frame. She's being helped up on this playground thing outside the frame. And I think this is maybe take 15 or something. Okay.

11:53 · jump to transcript →

Barry Sonnenfeld

Although this part of the scene was actually shot in Pasadena... ...but the reverse was shot in New York City. This is a composite of many different buildings along Central Park South. This dust was a dust element shot on a stage... ...and the ship is totally, in these shots... ...computer graphics. We did build a ship, but we only used it as a maquette... ...a model for ILM to scan the ship into their computers. Even this dirt is all electronic elements. The foreground was shot on-stage in L.A... ...and the background was a composite of buildings at Central Park South. This was also shot in Pasadena.

3:51 · jump to transcript →

Barry Sonnenfeld

Obviously, this is all computer graphics element... ...done by Industrial Light & Magic. Mary Vogt is a wonderful, sweet costume designer... ...who worked with me on Big Trouble and Men in Black I. Elfman did a fantastic score for this movie. VICTORIA'S SECRET This is probably the longest shot in production. This took over eight months of work in the computer. We kept trying to make the heads better and the eels wetter... ...and figuring out the speed that both the foreground guys should move... ...and how quickly the deep background stuff... ... should look like flesh and underwear... ...as this creature is creating... ...What will become Lara Flynn Boyle. Graham Place, the co-producer, has done about 20 things with me. He's my best friend. Just last night, I bought him dinner at Chinois on Main... ...With his wife and daughters. Hey, pretty lady. We're back in Pasadena. This was done with a series of shots which were seamlessly connected. For instance, that thing where his legs went up. Now, this is a separate shot. We've made a perfect dissolve. Rick Baker designed Lara's stomach here. She realises there's a problem between the picture she wants to look like... ...and what she turned herself into. It's all about Lara's stomach. I love the way Lara walks across there, just kind of trampy. Again, this was another dissolve. She walked across... And this is about an hour later... ...because we had to take her stomach off and add makeup to her. Robert Gordon was the first writer hired. Then Robert and Barry Fanaro, who worked on several movies with me... ...and went to film school with me... ...did a lot of work on the movie as we progressed. Now we're at New York City... ...on Sixth Avenue in the upper 40s, lower 50s. Patrick Warburton, who is Agent Tee, was also The Tick... ... which I directed the pilot for and produced... ...and also had a role in Big Trouble, a movie I really am quite proud of.

4:50 · jump to transcript →

Barry Sonnenfeld

Now, that flower is really there... ...but there never was a 600-foot worm. So this is all computer graphics... ...and the background plates were shot on Sixth Avenue.

7:28 · jump to transcript →

You need to be very careful. You need to be very aware. And something that I learned from being at a party where someone had a gun and the gun accidentally went off, I won't go into it. Everyone freezes. Everything stops. It's not like there's a panic and people yell gun and run out. In fact, when all those people are sitting in the background earlier in the scene, that came from a... I was at a grocery store that was being robbed and a guy came in and just...

14:53 · jump to transcript →

could very possibly be the person who killed that very attractive woman lying in the foreground. Right. Well, what I love about that scene, there used to be a bit in the script where she said, where as they're talking here with Robin, she says, you know, Megan. And they're like, what? The guys are like, what? And she's like, Megan is the daughter of one of the guys you killed. Right. And instead, it's just we don't hear, we don't see the gunfight. We hear it, like directorially, what you did. We hear the gunfight. We come out, we sort of see the aftermath of it, which I think was cool. Oh, that was that way on the pitch.

18:24 · jump to transcript →

In the script, they sort of spoke a lot more of their thoughts than you needed to show in the movie. Well, again, there was a series of scenes. You cut back to this diner. I love this lady. She doesn't care less about getting them coffee. And by the way, to any first-time director, whenever you're directing a scene with extras in the background, after the first rehearsal, or during the first rehearsal, don't even watch the actors. Watch the extras.

50:18 · jump to transcript →

onto the scene when we realized that the clouds were going to be with us for a few hours. Gollum. It's kind of weird to watch this because when we shot these plates, the background footage, it was about two years before we ever really saw Gollum.

9:00 · jump to transcript →

grasslands per se but this place I thought was a great stand in for Rohan because it has these interesting rock formations. You know those moving shots where you had both with Aragorn and Legolas, how did you do that? Well that was just a dolly that was trekking along the front of them and even though you're not getting closer to them or you're not getting further away it actually just makes the background roll around the back of them and that was just my obsession with keeping the camera moving as I say I just didn't want to do a static shot.

18:53 · jump to transcript →

We were keeping our fingers crossed about three years ago that one day there'd be a golem put there that would be looking all right. The Dead Marshes was primarily a set that we built in the parking lot of an old factory right next to a railway station. And a lot of times that we'd be shooting the Dead Marshes and there'd be trains rolling through the background. You'd actually see them in the film, the trains going right past the back of shot. And then later on, we painted it all out and put an extension to the marshes in here.

42:05 · jump to transcript →

called action instead of background, and the thing just reared up and actually did the stunt in the wrong place, and everybody was okay, and everybody ran out there, but we ended up using it in the film. And we ate horse meat for, like, what, weeks at craft services. It was really bad. Remember, Patrick, this scene right here, I was actually stressing out quite a bit because we weren't prepared to shoot this wolf yet. Exactly. The wolf was in the radio at the time, and...

6:12 · jump to transcript →

um tony in the medieval village right yeah that was the original beginning right and the problem is there there's you know screened it and with uh there's you know a lot of people not knowing who singe was if singe was a lichen and just the a little bit more of the background of of underworld one needed to be stated first the human descendant of corvinus yes all of this was created way after the fact because we shot it i mean you shot it

8:59 · jump to transcript →

budget looks better, but somehow you're probably going to end up spending more money on location, like you're saying. Yeah, this next shot coming up here, we built the floor. The background of this is actually from Underworld 1, and we just reused the shot. And so these guys coming in are on green screen just to save a bit of cash. There's a lot of great shots like that. Yeah, and the shot, actually, those guys that came in, originally was a shot with Kate coming in through in the first Underworld. That's right. And we removed her and hit her, and we hit her in the group of people. Yeah, we did. She's actually there, but you can't see it.

12:19 · jump to transcript →

E. Elias Merhige

Herr Doctor, I warned you. You should be more concerned about these things. The crosses are not for decoration. We will put them back. They just overwhelm our composition. But not for men of science. The crosses are just merely decoration. We must go. Henrik, what's the scene number? Uh, 23. Quickly. Yes.

21:17 · jump to transcript →

E. Elias Merhige

on the production team was nervous and I needed to get this shot. If I didn't have Willem and John and Eddie and everybody so brilliant and so quick, I mean they're like super computers in the way they know their marks and where to stand and where the limits of the frame are. But I'm going to stop talking about that because I really want to talk about this scene for a moment.

40:04 · jump to transcript →

E. Elias Merhige

in bed on time and not exhausting everyone because otherwise things get sloppy. This is one of my favorite shots in the film. It's one shot through the back window of a Model T from 1919 and we're looking through the back window and we see Wolf at the right in the foreground out of focus. Now we move around the car and here we see the conversation continue but there are no cuts here and this is the kind of filmmaking that

41:57 · jump to transcript →

My background is in filmmaking and not in nuclear physics. It was a very interesting and illuminating odyssey in order to prepare for this. And then going further and finding out what would happen to skin, what would happen to vital organs when exposed to radiation, and understanding what obviously the visual aspects

35:09 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, something that you don't really realize, and it makes it much more adventurous than it normally would be, is that because they're all period vessels, all of them had been mothballed. The destroyer that we had in the background, the K-19 and then the rescue sub, all had no functioning engines, and they all had to be towed and guided by several towboats.

56:30 · jump to transcript →

small and large armies and equipment and coordinating in such a way that it's like it's a choreography of impossible precision. Yeah, and to go a step further with that, one of the responsibilities of an AD is to help stage background players.

59:09 · jump to transcript →

I always thought this was a dodgy scene because we shot it in our Fangorn set in the studio, which was a tiny studio and you can basically look at a painted cyclorama in the background. And it's one of the reasons why we shot it so much out of focus is to try to disguise the fact that it was just a painted backdrop. And that shot there in particular.

9:23 · jump to transcript →

I was always amused at the dog that crossed twice in the background and the wide shots. Well, Rohan have a whole dog trainer programme going on. They're one of the few places in Middle Earth that really have instigated that particular programme. Yeah. An MP from Parliament came on the day we shot this. We built Edoras in conservation land. It was built on a very protected area of New Zealand and we had to be very careful with the impact on the environment and things.

34:44 · jump to transcript →

That guard that they've rushed past there was Big Paul. I think it's the only time in the movies that Big Paul gets his face actually seen. This shot's a little tricky because you're seeing the small version of Mary running who's the four foot high scale double and then we had Dominic Monaghan on his knees waiting for the scale double to get around the corner and then without cutting the camera we had Dom popping up in the foreground. And this scene was really also about the fact that Mary has always taken responsibility for Pippin.

36:13 · jump to transcript →

No, it's the burial. It's the frame around the grave. I know, but I think it's... There's a dolly right there. No. No, there was no dolly near you. Remember, this was a long lens. Look, there's a... I know. There's no way that you would have seen the camera. I sent you a piece of mail from Berlin and asked us to call you when it arrived. It came this morning.

31:10 · jump to transcript →

I know. Now, by the way, this is a shot where one of our crew members, and she will remain nameless, is actually in the background right there, right between you two. Right there. She's running. She realizes you can hardly see it. We actually went back and we did this shot, which is a very tricky shot to get.

32:59 · jump to transcript →

And I love this reveal of her. Again, the music, too, I have to say. No, this whole sequence is brilliant. The choreography of this is really... Also, if you watch the guard behind the background, he's facing to the right. And then in this shot, he's facing... Wait, he's facing to the right. Hold on. Now he's facing to the left. You can barely tell. We kept having flopping guard problems in post. We're going to have to move sooner than we thought. Can you identify who made the drop? Negative. Again, just, you know, a testament to ILM. Yeah, this is my favorite cue. I love this cue. I just...

49:11 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

who handles this scene with characteristic skill. People who see the film for the first time just don't realize that she is offering, seriously offering to kill Oz's wife. And yet she does it. So when you look back on it, you can really see that she is a killer, but it nonetheless surprises people when they discover it. Background music here is jazz violin.

5:58 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

agreed to charge us to such an extent that we couldn't afford to shoot there anymore. And then we found this location, which is just wonderful and shows a panoramic view of Montreal. I was really pleased that, yet again, financial considerations forced us into making a change, which turned out to be for the better. After the ensuing scandal and bankruptcy and embarrassment, my wife and her mother decided it would be best that we move back here. That's the St. Lawrence River in the background, of course.

13:43 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

No, I live here with my wife. You sure you're a dentist? Yeah, why? Because I've never met a dentist I liked. Well, I try to keep things as painless as possible. Me too. Yet again, you can hear French accordion music in the background of that scene.

14:12 · jump to transcript →

Noah Baumbach

Let me tell you about my boat. This is something when you first brought the idea of the character and the story to me, this was something you always wanted to include. I remember you said, you know, idea of this character, originally named Steve Cousteau. We later made him Steve Zissou. Oceanographer. He has this show. And then you said, "I want to do this--" Visual. - This visual. So this set, this is sort of inspired by, you know, World Book Encyclopedia, and Time-Life books, and, you know... elementary school books with fold-outs. And so that's kind of where it comes from, but making it in three dimensions. And for me, it was just something that I was inspired by. And it was years and years ago that I was planning to do this. And it was very kind of thrilling to be able to build this set because it was such an unusual one. And so many people-- For us, the movie is about all these characters who we made up, but they relate to people we know and they're characters we really love. We don't really have a lot of bad guys or anything. We just have these people we connect with. And the idea of having them all in there at once in this environment, that sort of encapsulates something about the movie. I think it goes back to what you were saying about your-- That this is also about what you love about making movies, and how you feel, you know, sort of lucky and privileged to be able to do it. And here, you know, in a way, this is like your dream of, "If I could make a movie, I want to do this." I mean, you've had this for so long. - Yes. And we shot it... It was like shooting a play. Explorers Club? - Right. You were on the set. - Yeah. This is-- Yeah, I spilled an entire espresso on my shirt. During the filming of this scene? Yeah. I was so jet-lagged. I was listening with a headset and it somehow disconnected from the headphones, the little mic part, and it knocked the espresso out of my hand and all over my shirt. Yes. You know, I always like paintings. - You do have a lot of paintings in your movies. - Yeah. And those tell about the character of his mentor, Lord Mandrake, and then we have Zissou, and then we have... And this story was actually based on something a friend of ours had been talking loudly in L.A... Chris Eigeman. Chris Eigeman had been talking loudly at an Indian restaurant in L.A. He thought that there was somebody who looked like a famous action hero, and he was talking very loudly about what happened to this guy, and it turned out to actually be the guy, and Chris was humiliated. And we lifted it wholesale and dropped it right into the film. And at one point you were going to have Chris play the guy until then you decided to make him Italian. It seemed nice to be able to put it all in subtitles. The Explorers Club is also-- This place is inspired by a club in New York who actually let us use their flag, which you can see in the background. And it's the Explorers Club on 70th Street, a block away from where I used to live.

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Noah Baumbach

One thing here, by the way, in the background of Owen's shot, you see this painting here, a nice little landscape, and there it is there in Cate's also. - That's interesting. Part of the magic. Theoretically, it's two of them, but it really isn't.

26:18 · jump to transcript →

Noah Baumbach

Bill Murray, one thing about Bill, there's kind of two parts of working with Bill. I feel like the two of us have a very similar understanding of how to approach the scenes in terms of what we each have to do. He's easy for me to communicate with. He's quick to grasp what I'm thinking of. He's quick to come up with his own interpretation that gets at what I'm hoping for, what I might not be able to describe to him in words that made any sense, he can somehow make sense of. There's another part of Bill, which is this sort of wildness that he brings to the set because he's somebody who can walk into a room and immediately command it, and he can always think of something great to say, and he loves being around people and getting them behind him and getting them following him. I've never met anybody else like him that I can absolutely certify. He really has an effect on people, and he has an effect on a group of actors, and he has an effect on a crew of people who will just never forget him. This scene, I really like how they play this. Yeah, this we did with the... Cate brings a lot out of Bill, and I think she has a real effect on him. Bill has a wildness about him. - He's really on the edge here. When he points the gun at her, that was improvised in his off-camera. In one take, I saw something black pop into the bottom of the frame, and the camera bumped, and afterwards I suddenly did a... "Did you just point your gun at the pregnant reporter?" It was a nice touch. Yeah, it was such a nice touch that I think I thought we wrote it.

27:31 · jump to transcript →

One other interesting note about this scene, that is a real keg with real beer, and Jacob Pitts, our delightful Cooper, really liked these scenes a lot. It's what we like to call method acting. That's one of the things we learned. Or simply drinking. - Aren't they the same? I guess we should introduce our cast, now that you've been watching for ten minutes. Scotty Mechlowicz as Scott Thomas. - Which is why we cast him. Make it very easy on ourselves. The beautiful and talented Michelle Trachtenberg as Jenny. And Travis Wester is her twin, Jamie. And that's Jacob Pitts going off to take a leak. And this was another one of our delightful cameos that we got because we were in Prague. Yep, that's Matt Damon, which... Everyone in the theater sort of goes, "It can't be. Is it? Is it really?" Why is his head shaved? He was actually in Prague shooting Brothers Grimm for Terry Gilliam at the time. And we actually went to college with Matt years ago. So we've been sort of friendly ever since. And he was in Prague and we asked him to do a day of work for us, and he agreed. The biggest favor ever. - Thank you, thank you, thank you, Matt. Yeah, Matt's just hilarious here. Matt's not watching this DVD. We're going to make him watch it. That'll be another commentary. That would be the biggest favor he's ever done. But the band was actually started by some other friends of ours from college. I guess this is as good a time as any... A couple of them were of Matt Damon's roommates in college. The band Lustra... - One of them. The band Lustra, good guys. And they wrote the song, which is really fun. We've known each other since college. I'm going to just talk now 'cause no one's listening to what I'm saying, because there's a naked girl on the screen. I wasn't listening. What were you talking about? Now this, in the unrated version that we're watching, she started off topless. In the theatrical release, if you saw it, we actually cut a different version where she started off with her top on and Cooper talks her out of her top. - He convinced her to take it off. And it was very strange, sort of, when you get into this whole nudity thing. Obviously, it's a hot tub scene, but somehow when her top was on and he talked her out of it, while it was a very exciting moment that he talked her out of it, it oddly made her dumber, even though she is sort of a stereotypical dumb blonde. - Right. And we always liked it this way, the way you're seeing it. We liked the scene to answer the question, "What is beyond gratuitous?" That's the answer. - There it is. And there they are. The answers. The other stuff we added back into the scene is just more of him screwing around with her. Because, to us, once you're at the nudity, it's how far he goes. This scene... - It's not about nudity. No, this scene was always about the crazy extent to which he got her to play with herself, as opposed to just getting her to take her top off. By the way, the banner in the background originally... This is what happens when you work in Prague. It's a big congratulations banner. The first day when we got there, it just said "congratulation," like one singular congratulation, which is a word we didn't know existed. Sort of a funny story about this scene, which, hopefully, we can tell. We were actually rewriting another movie, which I guess we'll leave nameless, that had a hot tub scene in it and we came up with this idea, which was the fact that a guy saying, "You have a smudge. You've got something on you." And we were really enjoying what we were doing so much that we didn't put it in that script. And we're like, "We'll use it one day." And here it is. Screw it. The movie was called Out Cold, I think. Yeah, exactly.

7:55 · jump to transcript →

Not that cursing. - Still makes me laugh. This kid... I swear, if Nial lived in Los Angeles... - Comedy gold. ...he would be on every sitcom in the world. He's a Star. - Every week, you'd just see him on different sitcoms, playing this exact part. I think he worked, like, six days for us, and I think we probably paid him about $130. It was $166. His character Bert, because we paid him $166, we began to discuss all expenses in terms of Berts as a method of payment. A very expensive dinner might be a Bert. Yeah, or like, "Oh, God, that's going to cost us two Berts." And it was-- One of the great things about shooting in Prague was cheap labor, cheap construction. Later in the movie, we get to the Vatican. Good labor and good construction. Fantastic. - The artisans are unbelievable. Great infrastructure, just great people that make movies. I mean, we put a crew together out of, you know, just really very few people from out of Prague and they were just fantastic. Especially because we'd never done this before. Our background was originally sitcoms. We all worked together on Seinfeld. Also Conan, Saturday Night Live, and so... I'll never forget it. I'm sorry. Bruce, the drummer of the band, has to sit next to Kristin and Matt and they all have to have their shirts off and Bruce says, "I don't know if I want to, because I have a rash." No, he said, "I'm just getting over the shingles." Shingles. That's what he said. He said it in front of Kristin. Kristin was like, "Oh, God, what have I gotten myself into?" I'm like, "He's joking, he's joking. He's a very funny musician." Without shingles, I promise. Actually, I remember we shot Mieke talking in English and in German, and we decided to use the German with the subtitles. We didn't think German would sound sexy or attractive, but she's Jessie. Somehow, when it comes out of Jessica Boehrs's mouth, she sounds sexy. Yeah, she's so warm and charming that even German sounds great. This is Jeff's favorite thing in the entire movie, that stupid jackalope T-shirt, which is not funny, but he swears is a joke. I don't think it's a joke. I just think it brings pleasure to those who see it. To you. - It's really a terrible T-shirt, especially compared to the many good T-shirts. This is actually-- I would almost... This is my favorite scene in the movie. This is the scene where the movie, to me, works the best, where these two guys were just sort of dialed in and their relationship... It helped very much that we shot this scene way toward the back of the shooting schedule. Yeah, if you look at the first bedroom scene where we already were, which is one of my least favorite scenes in the movie... Day three, we did not know where to put the camera. We did not get... We didn't take a wall out that we should have. It would've saved us time. We should've taken a wall out to get a master shot, a shot that allowed everything to happen and the camera to get it. We did not get that shot and got everything in little pieces and just then edited together the little pieces, and it just created... It took the entire day, which it just shouldn't have taken, and in this scene, which is basically a month and a half later, probably, we shot it... - Yeah. ...we knew which wall... We took the front wall out from when Jacob first walks into the room. Got our master shot, a really nice master. I think they were there performance-wise, in terms of their friendship. And, if I may, the jackalope T-shirt... - And the jackalope T-shirt... Also, it's sort of what we learned doing this movie that... The longest we ever shot in one location on this movie was three days, and this was probably the third day we were shooting on this set and we learned how to shoot this set. We definitely learned how to shoot the set. What wall to move and how to shoot it. The larger issue, I think, would be that I think any other... any person who had ever directed would've known, get a master. And so, an excellent lesson learned. - Yeah. I also think the actors were more comfortable with each other, we were a little bit more comfortable, and also we knew the set and we knew how to shoot it a little bit more. And that was one of the hardest things about this movie is, every day, we were shooting one, sometimes two, sometimes three locations, and you didn't have any time to learn each set and learn how to shoot it and what the easiest way to shoot it was, and as soon as you learned, you were done shooting there. - We had a location fall out, a Vatican location sort of fall out, which is how that other bedroom scene got moved up. And the initial schedule was sort of built to accommodate a little bit easier scenes with guest casts, things that maybe weren't as important and then that bedroom scene kind of got moved up and I do think it suffers.

14:17 · jump to transcript →

The shot just before this, the one outside, we actually shot at the Prague airport, which is another advantage to shooting in Prague. I don't think there's any way you could get a camera crew right on the departure gate of an American airport anymore because of security. Of course, one of the downsides of shooting at the real airport in Prague is that we had our day curtailed by a bomb threat. Bomb threat, which I still maintain... - Potato, potato. I maintain may have been because of us, and there was no bomb. There was no bomb. - I'm sure some... A grip left a bag of clamps somewhere and... But that was another scene, too, where, when we look at it, there was sort of a way of shooting it, two different ways of... We started shooting them sort of looking out where we were shooting into those boring offices, and obviously the prettier shot... I know I'm talking backwards... In hindsight, we should've shot the other direction. We should've shot in the other direction, because when they do turn around, you see that background. And again, these are lessons that were sort of both imparted to us as we were going along by our wonderful DP, who we should mention, David Eggby. - David Eggby, who saved us from ourselves every day. And there's a certain amount he can tell us, which he certainly did, and there's a certain number of times where we have to be wrong before you learn and certainly that was an example again, something we did where... The other thing in the deleted... - He warned us and we didn't. In between the courier counter and this scene, there's some fun stuff in the deleted scenes, which is they realize that they're gonna have to take all these courier packages, so they don't know what to do with all their clothes. They have to wear all of them onto the plane and through the airport. There was about 15 minutes of stuff which... Decide for yourself whether it works or not. It didn't work in the movie, but it's fun to look at. And by the way, Jacob's T-shirt says, "I'm rocking on your dime." Travis owned that T-shirt and we thought it was funny, so we put it on Jacob in the movie. These transitions-- That's my dog. These transitions were... That's my queen of England. - That's your beaded London flag. Yeah, it goes on the back of my cab seat. These transitions were also done by Kyle Cooper at Prologue. There's a few more of them coming up. You'll see. And this is our first big visual effects shot. Yeah, this was an amazing debate. That's not the real Jacob Pitts. That's a robot. This was shot in Prague by... There's a big river in Prague and that's all real. That's real. And we put a little British flag there, and basically the background was replaced. Not in these shots. In that shot. - In that shot, the background is replaced because on that side, I think, was... Is that where our hotel was? I don't remember. No, we were further down. - Further down, okay. And I guess we should mention Kevin Blank, who was our visual effects guru supervisor, who we found from the TV show Alias, where each week they do a lot of really amazing things like this. Right. If you look in the background, you see the buses on the bridge. The bridge is real and the buses are real, but the stuff behind that is not real. But the flag, for example, I don't think that's real. They added that. If you look at the clouds move... - There's cars moving on the side. The clouds are moving. They put those clouds in. And what Kevin allowed us to do, besides being a really good guy, as everyone on this movie was, he let us do a lot of big effects like that on sort of a TV budget which allowed... This was a "smaller budgeted movie," and it let us do some special effects without bringing in these, like, big effects companies where it would cost a lot of money. By the way, this is about the time that we should mention the Feisty Goat. This is the Feisty Goat pub. And we saw the sign out in front, which we misspelled. I think this is the right time to say that Alec, David and I went to Harvard and we didn't know how to spell "feisty." We spelled it wrong in the stage directions. Spelled it "fiesty." - The guys who made the sign just took our spelling. We showed up on the day and the crew was laughing and we couldn't figure out what they were laughing at. We shot an entire day without anyone noticing and on day two, people realized. - No, they knew. Did they know? Okay. - Oh, yeah. They were laughing their asses off at us. And then finally, it was like, "Did you guys know?" And they're like, "Yeah." - And this is the incomparable Vinnie Jones who, when we wrote the part of Mad Maynard, the chief hooligan, we hoped that maybe we could get Vinnie Jones. We wrote it with Vinnie Jones or a Vinnie Jones-type in mind, never thinking that we would get the real Vinnie Jones. The dream being Vinnie Jones or someone that would rip Vinnie off. And the pleasure of getting him was just so great. It was amazing. He scared the living daylights out of these two. They're not... This is, again, method acting. We told Vinnie that they were really... that the kids were really scared of him, and he did nothing to make them feel at home for this scene.

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You know those lenses they're wearing? You have no idea how many shot we have to adjust them later. They keep sliding. Bill actually, he prefers to keep his eyes in at all times, right? I remember talking to him on the first one. It is a little bit strange that he's our only vampire... ... that keeps his eyes glowing the whole time. I think it's... He really loves it, and it helps him with, you know, the... I guess Viktor's just, you know, a little more enraged... .at all times than anybody else. There's only one day when we shot... One or a couple of days? We shot the rain stuff? The fight with Sonja. That was really hard, remember, Richard? The lens just kept falling out. - Because they keep... I mean, the teeth would fall out. It was crazy. He had-- There was something... There was something wrong with Bill's teeth too. His teeth never stayed in. They were always falling out. Nobody's teeth really stay in. No. - There was always the teeth problem. There's probably 50 takes in the movie where Bill's tooth falls out. You had to shoot another take. Just to give credit for the guys. Those teeth are so thin. They're like little veneers so they don't deform the mouth. They, of course, have very little place to be supported. So, yeah, it becomes a bit of a headache, but... I always thought this was a very, very cool scene. You know, it's interesting how an actor like Michael Sheen... ...can absolutely command the screen still being very, very quiet. And he really did... Remember the pain it was to shoot in that dungeon? Yeah, it was tiny. - We basically built a real dungeon. And the walls are covered with concrete and stucco... ...S0 you couldn't take... - It was miserable in there, wasn't it? Oh, God, it was just hot. - It was small. lt was tiny and couldn't turn around. We'd also built it so there was only one or two ways out. So it really was a dungeon. - Yeah. It's a difficult situation where you're limited by what the scene Is. They're across the door. We shot first through the... And then we just, you know, you would just see them through the little... Little scene of eyeballs. - Exactly. It became really unbearable, and we decided, Richard... ...to give this a little time to re-shoot an exterior, because... It was impossible. - Yeah. It is claustrophobic. But it became too much, you saw nothing. It was just like, well... Plus, it's a big scene. It's where they're hatching the plot. The conspiracy. And you were so distracted by the fact that all you saw were eyes... ... through a hole in a grate. Now these were pick-up shots, these were later, right? All of these. This is practical, in front of a green screen. Kind of like the carriage, and this, you know, the background is CGI. And that's, again, Intelligent Creature, James? Yep. - Correct. That's right.

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We went for, like, one... One big transformation that I really like is the one where, you know... ...when Lucian regresses. We often see transformation one way, from a man to wolf. This time, it was like from the creature to the man. I was really pleased with that. Michael again gave us the whole choreography there. Beautiful shot. And Dan built us so many corridors. This is all like... I mean, we had a big chunk of corridors. We kept playing, turning around corners. lt was actually quite a big set. It was huge. lt was a three-storey set... ...basically all the way up to the ceiling of the thing. And with short ceiling on the lower floor... ...and then in the dungeon chamber, two storeys. And again, that's the big set. - The courtyard set. And this next action sequence too is an example... ...of just really squeezing everything out of what you've got... ...to make a sequence. I think we had, at the time... ...maybe two practical arrows that came in and maybe two hallways. And one real firing arrow, and just... We were able to be creative and make a whole sequence out of it. Well, this was one of the sequences that benefited the most... ... from Clint coming back with more money. I'm so glad we did that shot of the man in the face too. It was... - Excellent. Again, only one crossbow actually fires. Everything else was, you know, just editorial. You know, there's a huge culture of the weaponry... . like the machine gun in Underworld 7 and 2... ... that when you do a period, you just have bows and thing. lt was important that we have big bad-ass crossbow. They were more like machine guns than anything else. Just because I'm sure the audience liked what you had... ...with the guns, and the rifle and the other one. And that sort of like replaces it in some ways. The very powerful... We played with sound a lot there. So they look like when they shoot, they're really massively powerful. Same arrows. - Same arrows, yup. And who did the CG for the actual men that are getting pierced? We did extensive post vis with a company called Proof. And they had never done final VFX shots. Oh, Proof did that. - They came in and did the finals. They did a great, tremendous job. - Yeah, they're great. No! My lord. I wanted to do that shot so it feels like how big the corridor. I think it's kind of cool to see them walking across. It's a bit of an homage to Jacques Tati. Some things he's done, we see people walking for two hours before they... It's risky, but it sort of worked well with Bill in the foreground.

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Now, did his makeup get less? Because when he first appeared, his makeup is quite strong. Kind of white, cakey... - You know what this is? We shot pretty much... - In order? Yeah, in order. Not completely, but not far from that. And there was a sense like it was... Which I like. I like the way it got toned down. It's better. I like Bill's makeup at the end much better as well. lt was a little more theatrical at the beginning. Another scene that changed dramatically... ... from the way that we originally shot it. So here, basically, there is just a little piece of corridor... ...and the green screen at the end. Everything was done by... Duboi did all the cave stuff and the werewolves. This is a gorgeous shot, this one here. All the detail on all the wolves in the background. That's a shot that came first as a very blue shot. You know, It's funny how blue sometimes looks CG. We ended up turning and make it much more brown... ...and I think feels more real suddenly. But I thought it was great to be able to see that many wolves together.

50:55 · jump to transcript →

Kat Ellinger

But Despentes's cultural background is from a very working class background. It's a background I also really feel kinship to and identification with because it's not dissimilar to my own experience. Despentes, as Gen X came out of the punk scene, she grew up in a working class family. She was raped at 17 and went off to Paris, left home, went off to Paris, became a sex worker for a couple of years.

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Kat Ellinger

was really immersed in this scene, this kind of underbelly. And I think if you've experienced that world, you know, my own background is I was in and out of local authority care. And Despentes was actually institutionalized as a teen as well by her parents. But I was in and out of local authority care. By the age of 15, I was on the streets. I was living in squat communities. I was sleeping rough.

8:18 · jump to transcript →

Kat Ellinger

perhaps from a good background, middle-class background, who is assaulted, raped. It's seen as such a terrible thing, such an awful tragedy. And yet this kind of thing happens in these kinds of communities all the time. And there's almost a sense of the commonplace of normality to it, which is why Manu's reaction...

10:16 · jump to transcript →

It's pretty much up to that, and all Beijing photos, drawings. And the usual lousy background action. Sorry. Some things just will always bug me. Those two guys, like, fighting back there. What is that? What were you thinking? This is good stuff, though. I like this.

22:59 · jump to transcript →

That's my idea of a detective story. Like that. Well, it's also she's a great detective because she's empathetic. Because she actually can project her own feelings onto Zhang Ziyi's situation. Cinematic power, photogenic. Both women has that. They carry different things. That actually, I'm sorry to say, has nothing to do with acting. I came from a theatrical background. I used to believe in acting totally. But, no.

26:19 · jump to transcript →

This is also another first day of shooting. First day of shooting. We got the dailies back and everybody in the editing room was like, are they on some stage? Is that green screen, Dan? I mean, it looks so fake. Glacier in the background.

1:09:56 · jump to transcript →

Somewhere around here there's one of our deliberate mistakes coming up. I've always imagined that there's a car moving somewhere in the background. It's not here. Where is it? It's along the embankment. Alex is convinced there's a car somewhere there. It was while you were talking. We think he's just trying to undermine the film.

9:37 · jump to transcript →

This is a very busy part of London, Tottenham Court Road and Centrepoint, famous empty building, or partially empty now. When we originally, we used, we didn't use music at first in this sequence and that used to, that moment with the alarm going off used to give you a heart attack if you didn't have some kind of background music. So we used this track from Godspeed You Black Emperor, this French-Canadian anarchist who gave us permission to use their music, this driving, apocalyptic music.

11:54 · jump to transcript →

I think that's Frosty the Snowman you can hear in the background there on the music. That's the most expensive bit of music in the whole film. It's cost some phenomenal amount of money to pay for that. Really bizarre the way these things trip you up. Later on you suddenly find out something's hugely expensive. And suddenly there's just this big injection of warmth into the film as soon as Brendan Gleeson appears. Big smiling guy.

35:06 · jump to transcript →

To me, the relationship between these two characters was always the heart of this movie. It was a huge emotional part of the book. It had not been really dramatized to this extent in Manhunter, which had other concerns like the police procedural main plot. It was really Will Graham's Story. I thought, "Well, the book is "almost as much Dolarhyde's story as it is Will Graham's story." I was fascinated by this kind of Beauty and the Beast Iove story and the idea that he feels something very close to a strange love for this woman because she is not judging him, because she can't see the ugliness inside him, that he feels everyone can see. This is kind of the beginning of the relationship between Reba and... This shot coming up is my favorite shot with the people with the umbrellas, kind of silhouette in the background. This is a huge step for this character to take. He's scared she's... She has no reason to be scared, but he's terrified. This is actually the first thing -/ shot with Ralph and Emily. - Really? Yeah.

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Clever work on his note, by the way. This mirror was kind of really disturbing, looking at it. It had this weird distortion. Put me next to him! That was tricky. It's similar to that shot in their first scene together. Where the character in the background is out of focus. Go on, then. I love that one. "Seduce me with your wares." It's not in the book, but it's the kind of thing that you figure out... He never says anything in the most simple and obvious way. There's always some kind of game going on where he's amusing himself with his word choice, too. Bit measly, don't you think? Tony did not change a word of this. I love this. He's an actor who does every line as written.

1:22:41 · jump to transcript →

He's breathing heavy. It's probably the first time he's ever kissed a woman, or a living woman. Now, would you show me where the bathroom is? Then we went back and re-shot this. Why? For this insert. And that's digital blood in the water, believe it or not. It's done by the computer. It's just a wonderful little moment, because she can't see the teeth in the jar, or the shattered mirror. She doesn't realize the increasing danger she is in. Again, you're telling a story with visuals and not with dialogue, that really means very much. I have to do a little work. If I'm keeping you from work... - No. ...I'll go. - I want you to be here. I do. It's just a tape I need to watch. It won't take long. This is similar to my scene in Family Man, where he's watching the videotape. Another family movie, right! - Another family movie. I did the same thing with Danny, where he transitioned the recorded music on the tape into score. So now, this music in the background... - Right. Which is Duke Ellington. - Duke Ellington transitioning into the score. Right. No, it's great.

1:29:23 · jump to transcript →

Andrew Niccol

There are times when people work for nothing on a movie. In this case, people actually paid the production to work on the sequence. The background plates were done in three days without a motion control camera, which is something of a miracle and something none of us want to try again, especially my gifted cinematographer, Amir Mokri, who had to operate himself.

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Andrew Niccol

Yuri's journey, Nicolas Cage's character. He also starts life in Ukraine and eventually is responsible for the death of child soldiers. Hopefully this sequence sets the tone for the film. I wanted the film to be subversive. It's the reason this peacenik anthem is playing in the background. It's the same with Yuri's narration in the film. The narration was...

3:06 · jump to transcript →

Andrew Niccol

Coming up, this shot of the ship leaving harbor. You can see Cape Town's famous Table Mountain in the background. Again, I was going to remove it digitally, but that budget thing again.

51:41 · jump to transcript →

with the short bus going by as we zoomed. It was actually when school was out when we started shooting that. How? Maybe they had a little summer trip. All buses in New York City are short buses, actually. Which means... Except for the one that's just about to pass in the background. Okay, so you see those two Chinese characters behind me? Oh, yeah. They are...

9:59 · jump to transcript →

you know, trying to teach and learn wherever she can. And so she watches pornos, right? And in the pornos that I watch for, you know, background knowledge for the character. Of course. The straight pornos, people are always slapping their wahoos, you know? Their what? Their what? They're either spitting on their snatches or slapping their...

49:28 · jump to transcript →

This was a scene that we also went way off script to have fun with and just loosen it up. And remember right after it, I ate pussy for the first time on that same couch. You did. I'm glad you did it after. I'm so anti-woman. I'm telling you, John, we're going to get ourselves some nice girls out of this thing. In the background is Dirty Martini, a Miss Exotic World 2000-something.

56:50 · jump to transcript →

our nickname for the Predalien. And he's establishing his dominance over the little newly shedding warriors. Bitch-smacked the warrior around and then gets to have his way with the homeless lady. And this is one of the homage shots, the original Predator. It's very, you know, the whole layout and composition of the shot was very similar to the opening of the original film. And again, obviously, this is a visual effects. You want to talk about Hydraulx a second, guys?

19:22 · jump to transcript →

You know, they have the same evil sort of sense of humor as us. We got along with them really well. And they also come from a similar background from us. I mean, they both own the company, like me and Greg own Hydraulx. And they're also both artists, which me and Greg also still are. So it's like everything we do, we're very much in tune with each other. And, you know, it's just in different parts of the same field, basically. So this is the extended scene inside of the Predator crash ship.

20:48 · jump to transcript →

And why did you pick the name Hawkins? Well, it's a little throwback to Predator 1. Okay. You know, if you actually read closely, there's actually a couple of the guys from Predator on some of these tombstones here. On the different tombstones. Somehow they all managed to come back to Colorado to be buried. Yeah, I think Jesse Ventura's character was in there as well, but it was in the background. I don't think I ever really see. But we thought the Hawkins thing was kind of just a cool little, you know, a little throw-in for people that noticed it to get a little chuckle out of it. This is also our anti-smoking PSA. Yeah.

57:50 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

Now, the company wouldn't actually lend us one of their cars for the film, so I had to go to a private owner. But unfortunately, the insurance was so steep and expensive to have that car on the set that I could only afford it for one day. So we had to make a polystyrene double for the car. And so all the wide shots in the action sequence in the background, the McLaren is actually just a very crude styrofoam version of the sports car.

31:13 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

operator David Emmerichs flying so the shot looking between the guys is all I had of the rocks falling towards us and the frame later all you see is the camera hitting the ground and then clouds and sky so I think David was very upset that he didn't manage to get the great shot from the front and I had one take at it but that's why you have three or four cameras because I had the side angles and they work perfectly as you see so that's what ended up in the film.

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Simon West

that I would love to go back and shoot there again. Now, when Lara falls through the hole in the ground and she's tumbling through the earth, I shot this in one of the oldest techniques possible. It's not blue screen or green screen. It's not CGI. It's literally her standing on the ground with a rolling background

44:51 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, that could be a real problem. Now that I know you better, as well, how am I ever going to look at you? Here's the scene that was cut... This is something I think... - What's she got on? A flesh-coloured bra? - Right now. When you're watching at home, you're not gonna see.... We're watching something that doesn't have the letterbox. I don't understand. What do you mean? She has pasties. - Yeah. And so they-- You can actually see them in this cut. But once everybody watches at home, like now, they're not gonna see that. What does that mean? You digitally removed pasties? No, no. It means that the letterbox.... The black bars on the top and bottom of the frame... Oh, I see. Right, okay. - It's within that frame... ...So you're not going to see it. It's cut out. But we did. We saw them. - We did. You knew that was going in the trailer as soon you saw my shiny bottom. I told you that day. - Yeah, I was so pleased. I think I even apologised upfront to say... ...that this will be in the trailer. - Why would you apologise? It's an ass shot. - Yeah. It also shows the mansion. It's also a dynamic shot. But if she was wearing a coat, it wouldn't be in there. Okay. Well, all right. If you wanna get all cynical about it.

1:06:42 · jump to transcript →

Oh, and you weren't here for this whole... Were you very glad, because the other babe was there? Yeah. That helped take some of the pressure off... ...but the-- Well, actually, this whole costume, we had a "wardrobe flaw"... Her whole boob escaping. - ...aS Janet Jackson would say. Poor you. Poor baby. - I rushed in as soon as I heard. Yeah, you're really good like that. How have you done that? That's CG, right? That's CG, which I don't think you've even seen yet. We shot that practically, and it just looked horrendous. It looked like three blind mice kind of popping up. And this was all a reshoot that we did. - Oh, really? Yeah, this was all back in L.A. We had a good time. It was just blood and guts. That's me throwing the paint across the window. Oh, is that you? - Yeah. Can you do a bit, like, when my coat flaps around, you're flapping it? That's the prop guy. - Very hands on. Yeah. What were you thinking right here? - "Is it nearly lunchtime? Should I buff my bottom? Am I gonna worry about my camel toe?" Remember how many people were on camel-toe watch because of that suit? No, it became "CT." I would just yell out, "CT," and, "Okay!" There were four people who made it their mission. This is new. This is a new shot here that's just showing Speedman... ...dreaming about the Olsen twins. And so we had some flashes that were supposed to happen right there. This is in the original. Coming up, there's a section where Viktor takes out some of the implants... ...and you see him unhooking himself from that stuff... ... that we had cut out of the original. This isn't it, right? - Yeah, this is. These shots, though.... These, I did all those in post. None of those shots... We didn't take any of the lights down. lt was something we did as an afterthought... ...and just darkened it to make it look like all the lights went down. It actually worked okay. I was worried I wouldn't catch it. I didn't have my glasses on. I couldn't find the takes to put on the outtake reel, but... There weren't that many, because I'd been practising like crazy. Oh, it didn't show. - Oh, really? Look at that. Yeah, look at that. Look at that now. - I was so proud of that. lf someone throws something at me, I tend to duck and wince. The amount of windowpanes we had to replace in the background.

1:14:38 · jump to transcript →

I think you arranged that hair yourself, didn't you? Oh, I always arrange the hair. We gotta figure something out for the sequel, some kind of moulded shell... ...some helmet that looks perfect, that doesn't move. I might do that Olsen-twins movie myself. Well, it sucks because there's so many elements in a shot... ...and the fact that the hair makes you do the shot over is really frustrating. But if the hair falls in your actor's face... ... you just can't use it. And it was just an ongoing battle. Did you ever let the art department do this... ...or were you busy all over this thing as well? No, I let them do it. For these shots, I would arrange it... ...and just pick a bunch of stuff off and put it together. They went crazy around the office. Actually, the first attempt to do that bulletin board... ...which I said should look like some really creepy homicide board, was... They went and took a lot of pictures of people in the production office. You actually see people at drafting tables. And other people are kind of looking and smiling into the camera. And I said, "It's supposed to be surveillance photos." It's a little bit too chummy. - Yeah, a little bit too aware. You've got a guy with an illustration of a crypt set in the background.

1:27:19 · jump to transcript →

We are all used to a lot of, especially in American movies, we're used to a lot of words. And it was really exciting to strip them down in rehearsal, in the making, and even in the editing of the movie, just to let the composition, performance, and story architecture sort of shine through. Yeah, but we had to be very, very specific too in the creation of the scenes and the layout and what kind of information emotionally we're sort of doling out. You know, are we doling out the feeling of family?

10:31 · jump to transcript →

You know, we wanted to shoot this in front of Grand Central. It was one of the trickiest things. The city had never shut this viaduct down before, and we needed it for six days. So they let us do it over three consecutive weekends, six days. So we would actually shoot for two days, go away for a week, shoot for two days. We really lucked out again with weather. You know, there was one moment where you see the mannequin move, and we had actually had a little thing running where we cast people to play our mannequins. And in the background of some shots, you can see they're real people playing the mannequins and not

46:17 · jump to transcript →

This is fine. There's a gas tank. That's an actual practical explosion and things being pulled with wires. And that's not a real person. Yeah. I like that bit there. Yeah. And that's surprisingly, like, stunts usually suck the first time you do them, and that was the first time. That was actually kind of nice, that whole explosion and Will in the foreground. You just said splosion. Explosion? Explosion. Boy, he's fast. Yes.

1:23:31 · jump to transcript →