Coverage

was shot at three separate times of day. Juliette's, all of Juliette's coverage in this scene is shot at 10 o'clock at night on a process trailer in a parking lot, and I am standing to her right, just outside the door. Wow. And I'm watching the monitor and jostling up and down with my fat ass on the trailer to create the motion of the car. That's good. Dick Pope's great. Dick's phenomenal. And who was the lighting guy?

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the surrogate mother notion. And here's Geoffrey Lewis. Steals a show. Always. Just point a camera at Jeffrey. This was one of the scenes where Ken, well, in every scene, Ken Kokin would say, you've got to do more coverage. You've got to do more coverage. And I said, this is one instance where we will not need the coverage. Just let Jeffrey run. We both had worked with Jeffrey before. I was just going to bring that up. A pilot that we did.

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Dylan and Scott Wilson. Scott actually pushed me to add coverage to this scene. Originally, I was only covering the scene from this angle in my rather foolish obsession

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So although we had a lot of... As we talked about earlier, we shot so much of it in the main C3, the main control compartment, that that in itself was a challenge to keep the scenes different and alive and not have the same coverage each time we arrived there. When we did get out of the submarine, we had a couple of really interesting...

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Of course, you could build scaffolding on the submarine itself, but then, you know, once you get out in the open water, the ability to take away that scaffolding or move around on it certainly limits the amount of shots you can or the coverage and necessitates bringing it back to the harbor to remove that stuff. So Mark Manchester and Greg Musson, our two key grips, came up with a wonderful solution to that dilemma, and we got this vintage...

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And what an honor to work with somebody that's gifted as Walter. I was quite intimidated at the beginning, thinking that I would be getting notes on a daily basis of what was wrong with the coverage. And it was so wonderful to see somebody that has such passion and is still so young-minded that whatever we presented to him, he was excited about and encouraged us to continue on those trains of thought and work the scenes, made these scenes really unique and covered it in a unique way.

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Of course, this was just a little bloody tin shed, wasn't it, near the airport. It's always difficult to make studio sets look like they're really exteriors. It's always to do with the lighting, because you can't actually get the huge degree of light that you have from the sun. And the lights of the studio are too close. They're not as far away as the sun, so the angle of the light feels all wrong, and the coverage of the light, and it just, they always look a bit fake. But, you know, we did our best here. We've put a lot of smoke into it,

1:48:38 · jump to transcript →

And Kieran did Frodo pretty much, didn't he? Billy worked very closely with Fawn, who was a female, a lady. And Billy really got on well with her and instructed her how to walk like him and perform like him. And she was very, very good. Some of these shots of Gandalf were little pickups that we did because we had all these wonderful big wide shots, great vistas, but we didn't really have much coverage of Ian himself.

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because that's all we had time for. We started by shooting the closeups of Sean and Elijah and we shot them together. So we had one camera, our A camera on Elijah and our B camera on Sean, which you don't normally do. Normally you shoot one actor and then you turn the cameras around and you shoot the other actor separately, but I didn't have time for that. So I actually did what they call cross coverage where you're shooting them both simultaneously. And we did three takes.

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Actually, the first time I saw that weapon, that's the shot I had in my mind. Right. Sticking in someone's head. Yeah, sure. Why does his head look so much like a, I don't know, like a pumpkin or something? Yeah, back to the master thing. Yeah. It's utterly very important. I think in the, at least in the martial art film, or in the Jianghu world,

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and what kind of rules I have to follow, what kind of guidance I took from him, take that as your honor. But it's also about the level of skill and keeping your skills below those of your master, because if you're better than your master, how do you master? Because the master is always hiding the highest skill to himself or herself. Right. That's why the Chinese get worse and worse from 3,000 years down. Because it's a tradition.

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Jonathan Lynn

and that means you have to shoot a lot of what we call coverage, different sizes, different angles. I worried about whether people would be concerned about why they were visiting a jazz club like that in the middle of the day. Nobody's ever worried about it at all. In all the other takes, we had a sign outside the club that said lunchtime jazz,

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Jonathan Lynn

Because there are no laughs in this scene, I was able to shoot it in a sort of a long, lingering crane shot. I didn't have to do any coverage because I didn't have to risk... I didn't have to, you know, envisage the possibility that something might be unfunny and have to come out.

1:14:21 · jump to transcript →

This is a great editorial thing. This line... I feel like I need a shower. ...' I need a shower" was on camera. Some lines you don't need to see the actor Say. No, of course not. So, yeah, I'm okay with it. I wish we had something better, but there's only ten days till the next full moon. We've got to rattle his cage. For me, the next shot coming up Is... This is one of the most beautiful shots, with this golden light on the street here. - We talked about cutting this at one point, but I like this little scene with the newsie here. I'm not sure that the audience can really follow exactly what's going on here, which is that this is a place where you can get a newspaper before anybody else can get it, which turns out to be important to the plot. I'm not sure they can follow that. Originally, it was written in an airport. - At an airport terminal. I just like the moment he gets here to be menacing. You told me what? It's another guy, part of the Ratner ensemble of actors, Gianni Russo, who was actually Carlo in the Godfather, who was married to Sonny's wife. I love this car. The Hoffman mobile. It scrapes the bottom. This is fun because it played in one. I shot coverage of it, but it just... Camera moves in... It's more of a surprise. This is great. His getting knocked out. Look how much acting went into that arm. This is just a fantastic set. Here's a chance to see more of the set, and a very difficult scene for the two actors. Difficult to play. It's very stressful and emotional, and to get the intensity they need for it, it took take after take probably. I got yelled at at least four times by Philip during this scene because he was in his underwear, glued to this chair. He wasn't actually glued. - Some kind of glue. Not stuff that ripped his hair out. - It's not much fun to sit there. It was uncomfortable, I can tell you that. It's not fun for Ralph, who had to be naked in so many of these scenes.

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Really, in the next scene, about how to link these together. It's amazing when you're pressed for time, how you come up with creative ideas, and I end up shooting this in one. This camera just moving around, building tension, and it worked so well. I didn't originally intend on doing this, but I had no time, so I couldn't do the coverage. I had to figure out how to do this in one, tell the whole story, then I went back, and shot the overhead shot later. The overhead shot is actually two extras, right? These are body doubles. That's one double. Mark really wanted it. He said, "You gotta show this tattoo. "You gotta go back and..." I was against this whole thing, even the spit. Here we are again with something we went back and forth on, whether it's necessary or useful to show that.

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This was a tough one. This was a tough one because we had a lot to... You know, every scene, there were a lot of actors in every scene, so we had a lot of coverage we had to get. But we rehearsed it. We went out and rehearsed it. We rehearsed it in the jungle. Yeah, we went out to the location and rehearsed it. Two-hour drive to the jungle. Yeah. And you know what? It worked. We were mentally prepared. Yeah, this was... God bless the 4x4. It's four patties of meat.

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Diplodocus. Don't be so diplomatic. What you got going on with the TC, brother? Got three projects in the pipeline. I want to work with that motherfucker. You got for sure at least one in the pipeline. I want to work with Bill Hader. Look at him. Look at him, right over the shoulder. He's a young buck, but he's got it. Bill Hader's really one of the most talented guys. He's the shit, man. He's got the goods. Yeah, and as an impressionist, it's insane. You can do an impression of anybody and find an essence of them. McConaughey's bringing it right here, too.

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Some of the difficulties of a film like this are all of the logistics involved and getting things like this to match. All the wide coverage is photographed in a real outside exterior location and the closer coverage in the studio. Again, if it was a daylight scene, you couldn't shoot it on a soundstage because interior day just doesn't work. You can't recreate the sun. It always looks fake. They do it all the time in television. You can always smell it a mile away, but you can never get away with it on a feature film. So this, again, is...

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Wes Anderson

You can see Buckley's leash is still dangling there on the right side. Poor Buckley. ...but there's nothing we can do for him at the moment. Come on. Ben Stiller asked me... He knew the way that we tend to shoot the stuff, without coverage. Sort of staging the shot so it all just plays through more in pieces. But he specifically asked if it was possible to have coverage of this scene here. And I told him that scene, we are gonna have coverage. We'll have close-ups. This whole thing is gonna be... And it made him more comfortable. Then on the day we were doing it, I suddenly saw that we could just play it all the way straight through, and I remember Ben kind of realizing it and kind of saying: "So it's just gonna be one shot, isn't it?" And I was like, "Ah, well, it could be," and he just kind of went: "Okay." But I really love both of them in this scene. You know, this is Take 18. They had to do this a number of times. And I really think that that, to me, is sort of just about the most important moment in the whole movie, and I feel like they did their best work in it.

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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.

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Noah Baumbach

One thing that was always appealing to us was the idea of having Bill Murray, who'd never-- I don't know if he'd fired a gun in a movie before. In Ghostbusters it was kind of a gun. And he'd fired some guns in Razor's Edge, he's at war. I know he shoots out some headlights in Razor's Edge. Right. - But here he was for an action hero. The first one time as action hero, but he plays the giant action scene-- I say "giant," but-- For us, giant. The action scene in a striped Speedo, a bathrobe, and flip-flops. Well, we'd also talked about sort of the choice of the music, you know, the-- You know, the-- Like you were saying about the color timing and the, you know, the sort of score you use... here, sort of breaks into sort of the Iggy Pop song, which I think sort of brings us back into the sort of playful Zissou world, you know, that sort of-- - The Iggy Pop. The Iggy Pop does. You'd talked about at one point maybe doing it all silent. At one point, we had a version that didn't have any gunshots or anything like that, and all the sound was gone. It was totally silent, we had some music playing, and the effect was much more grave. When we put this music on-- I liked the other way too, but this seemed maybe to be more right for the way the whole movie needed to work. I don't know if I-- I feel like I could've shot more coverage on this. We were struggling. It's got an energy though. I'm not a professional action-sequence director, but I can do better. I guess Bill Murray also fired a gun at the end of Stripes. I think they go to Argentina to rescue some people. One thing with Bill, put a gun in his hand and he can't wait to empty the magazine. This is interesting. We had to throw this gun into the-- Well, you can't throw a gun into the ocean. So actually, he switches hands with the prop guy who's out below the frame and gives him a rubber gun to throw. But we did, when he knocks that guy out and throws him overboard in the earlier part of that scene, we lost a gun. Bill actually accidentally hit the guy, and the guy went in the water, was knocked out by Bill hitting him, and his gun fell, and Bill's gun fell into-- The gun Bill was grabbing out of his hand fell in the water. And then they said we couldn't shoot anymore, and they called the police, who came out and flew over helicopters while our Marines searched for it. I was like, "Can't we keep shooting while we look?" "No." And we were worried our stunt guy was going to get arrested. But then the Marine guys found it in the bottom of the ocean there, which is only like 20 feet deep or something there. But they found the gun, brought it back up, and we were allowed to continue when the helicopters went away. That's why you went a few days over. Things like that. - Variety of things, yeah. How you holding up there, intern? Doing okay?

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