Lighting

to make it look more warm and passionate. So he came up with the idea of a color. He was suggesting using more of a red, orange, and green as a key color. That will make it totally different from the first one. The first one was a little cold and have a blue lighting, and even though the set is pretty dark, but I want this one a little more charm, more open.

22:03 · jump to transcript →

more warm and more passion. The thing I like about Thomas E. Sanders, all of his designs just look so real. He like realistic. He like everything look real and also have a great passion feeling. He made model for every set so we could figure out about a camera angle and the atmosphere, the lighting and how everything work.

22:31 · jump to transcript →

What am I doing here? And I also want every scene in Spain, you know, they're all moving. So a lot of camera movement and special lighting to make every scene look pretty much like a dancing. No matter the party scene or the cartridge, the balcony scenes, every scene, whenever we see Spain, it's all moving. It's pretty much like ballet dancing.

23:01 · jump to transcript →

before we were going to shoot, like the research we did in Russia, and then learning about nuclear physics and spending time with a gentleman from Massachusetts Institute of Technology who basically educated us on nuclear physics and working with that. There's a particular lighting effect from...

29:41 · jump to transcript →

glow that was effervescent in a way and wouldn't contaminate the actor's skin and can be lit from a top light UV source that doesn't actually light the actors. So you could still dramatically light the actors and stay true to the set and the available light that's in the set and get this magical hue that's coming off the flooded reactor compartment. And so through that process and trying to be economical, we found out that we could get powdered quinine. And so we

32:42 · jump to transcript →

where the conning tower itself was the most weight. And so then that presented problems for us because you don't want to compound the problem. So we couldn't bring lighting equipment in as close as we wanted it to, and we couldn't bring cranes. And we kind of had to counterbalance everything that you bring within a certain circumference of the conning tower itself.

51:46 · jump to transcript →

playing himself. They did a great job with the sets and the lighting.

7:25 · jump to transcript →

Run away or head towards? Well, no matter what, I'm sure that Greg is really happy that you brought that up. This is the shot I was talking about earlier that, you know, there was clearly rain in the background. As these lights pan, you would see the rain being, you know, backlit by the light. I think you're looking at other things at this moment. Yeah, you are. You are, and I think it all works out. If you notice, there's no... You can't see anything in that pit back there on that shot. We still want to spend the money.

19:07 · jump to transcript →

Big shots like that, you don't think about, but not only do they have to be lit and we have to rehearse it and get everything ready, but then we have to light all those flambos and light all the torches and wet down the floor. And sometimes by the time you're done, the floor is dried up or the fires have gone out. It's a funny thing about torches. You see all these people use torches in movies and you think, well, they last forever. Those torches, any kind of torch like that, they'll stay lit maybe three or four minutes, max.

37:27 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

I got the idea for this robot fight while I was staying in LA. I had jet lag, I was in a hotel room, I couldn't sleep, so I turned on the TV, and there was this infomercial for a boxing training device. This thing looked like a big plastic dummy of a man, and it had lights for its eyes and lights for its mouth, and when one of these lights lit up, you were supposed to punch or kick it in that spot. And when I was thinking up ideas for what Lara would do in her training, I thought, well, she's gonna have something a lot more advanced

1:06 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

This scene shows up particularly Peter Menzies Jr.'s beautiful lighting. Everything in the film is just exquisitely shot. I'd worked with Peter before on my previous film, The General's Daughter, and I loved the look of that film, but I think in this film he really surpassed himself, and every single shot and every single scene is quite exquisite, and this is a very good example of it, with the light flooding in through the window on Lara at the desk.

9:34 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

careful and pernickety about how they were doing their research. Lara would wade in there with a hammer and just cut to the chase and get on with it and just smash the thing so she could get the information she needed. This clock was beautifully made by a real clockmaker and it really lit up inside and every piece worked on it and it was a beautiful piece of workmanship made of solid brass and we had two or three different versions of it that did different things and also we built a gigantic I think three or four foot across

17:23 · jump to transcript →

He's also, like Edward Norton, an actor who can accomplish incredible things with stiliness. He's hardly moving here. But his intensity is like a laser beam. If one were nude, say, it'd be better to have outdoor privacy for that sort of thing. You think the yards are a factor when he selects victims? Yes. And there will be more of them, of course. Victims. You'll be wanting lots of these little chinwags... I love that line. "lots of little chinwags, I take it." I need your opinion now. Then here's one, You stink of fear under that cheap lotion. You stink of fear, Will, but you're not a coward! That's a nice shot. Yeah, this is my editor's favorite shot in the movie. Mark said this was his favorite shot. And I held on it, which I was... You could've cut away from it, but it's very powertul. Edward was very good here. The lighting was great and it just worked. ...poor dullards.

35:24 · jump to transcript →

This is my least favorite shot in the whole movie only because it felt like the camera was attached to his back. Maybe I should've scripted it so that there were more specific reactions to him there. No, there was. I shortened it, actually. I love the lighting in here because it's an infrared lab. It's supposed to be black, but how do we see if... It's supposed to be pitch dark. And Dante just... The highlights. Here was a moment that I was sort of proud of as a screenwriter. We've never got a really good look at Dolarhyde's face in this movie. We've seen him from behind, in the stocking mask, in the shadow. We've held him back like the shark in Jaws. We havent really seen the killer. And now, we're going to see him for the first time as a blind woman can't see him. That's the kind of effect that you love to make happen as a screenwriter. I'm very proud of the fact that we didn't know she was blind here until this moment, which is written so beautifully. It's held back. She's moving around like she's seeing. You don't notice it unless you know the Story. And then this little moment and then his reaction to it.

50:59 · jump to transcript →

I've always tried to hang on to what that cougar looked like. But by now, to tell the truth... This was made-up stuff that was not in the book. But I knew that they were going to have that scene later with the tiger, the sedated tiger, and I wanted to set up some deeper meaning to that scene for her. So I added this little section. You don't say much, do you? There was actually a scene that was left out. That was his arrival, but Mark thought it was unnecessary and Nis... - When they first arrived and walked into the apartment for the first time here. One of the things that amazes me about Ralph is that he... The script so often gives him so little to work with. The character is painfully shy, he speaks in monosyllables. This was a scene that I used to test the actors. - I remember seeing the test at the auditions. This is the scene that helped me decide that the actors that we tested werent right for the role because they can get the Dolarhyde torturing Freddy Lounds scene, but to have a vulnerability here... But you still have to fear this guy. It's a tremendous feat of acting to accomplish as much as he does with so little to say. My biggest worry going into production was that we would not be able to find an actor who could do everything that this part needed. This is a part where the actor has to bring so much, and the script doesn't help him as much as it does other actors. This is really where you see his imperfection, which is his cleft lip, which Matthew Mungle, who is a brilliant make-up artist and effects make-up artist did such a realistic job of. I tend to do a Iot of tests for hair and make-up and the tattoo. We spend a Iot of time. When you work with Dino and Martha, do they want input into those kind of choices or is that left mostly to you? I love working with Dino. Not only is the guy a legendary producer, but it's great working with Dino and Martha together because... It's a whole other energy. - Each one has their own opinion of things. Right. They are a great producing team. -/ never work with a producing team. - They are very shrewd about script. You did a lot of work with Dino and Martha before I even came on board and you delivered a first draft, basically, that was shootable. - The first draft was green-lit by the studio and it had a lot to do with Dino and Martha's notes because they are very shrewd about what the audience needs to know, and when they need to know it. The sense of the rhythms of the story, and the rhythms of the acts, they have a really good grasp. This is my favorite section of the film. This is where the pace really... It seems like it really takes off here. This is Run from Run-D.W.C. who unfortunately, I cut out of the film, not completely, but... That was him. - That was the top of his head? That was a wonderful appearance. The story really takes off here. The pacing of this section, to me, is very exciting. The music and the editing. This is where I was telling Harvey, "Can you do it twice as fast?" Harvey tends to pause in the strangest places. But it always comes out very natural. He's a brilliant actor. You had always wanted to work with him? - Always, yeah. You had always wanted to work with Harvey. Ever since I was a kid, I was just... I grew up on him. ... possibly from the Tooth Fairy. This was a Dante shot. - It's a spin. "Let's go around him." I said, "I don't want to get dizzy." He said, "No, it's an urgent scene." It does create the urgency of what's going on here, that events were spinning out of control as suggested by that. Because of 9/11 we couldn't fly a helicopter through the Washington skyline. So that was one of our few CGI shots. It's really called a composite, because we shot a plate and then we took a shot of a real helicopter. This was done on the set. Ralph read this on the set. - Standing next to them? Not when we were doing the scene, but he just read it once and this was the take we ended up using. This is a one-take performance. He was just so in the mode. He reads this letter very well. I love all this sort of hi-tech, FBI forensic stuff, and it's something that we couldn't get a whole lot of into the script because of just sheer space considerations. So where we could do these kinds of things, it was really fun. I love that shot, and that shot... All the shots of Lecter in this... Brett, you love all your shots. - I know, not all of them, but those specific ones. I like all the lighting changes through this. This is Tony Hopkins' stand-in. This is the only... I wondered why he had a British accent. I wondered why the superintendent of a hospital in Baltimore had a British accent. He migrated. This is Ken Leung who's been in three of my other movies. On the right? He's a great stage actor from Broadway, and he was the villain in the first Rush Hour, and he was in Family Man. He's just a... He's very good with this part. - He's excellent. He's really very real. ...are transparent to infrared. These could be the tips of "T's" here... This whole sequence is quite close to the book. Tom Harris is very well-grounded in all of these procedures. It's just a real gift to the screenwriter to have an author have done so much research, and be so on top of these things. ...they made that up. Three "T's" and an "R" in "Tattler." How do you communicate through a tabloid? You got what? News stories. This scene was much longer really, but we realized in the playing of this scene that the audience... This is an example where the audience was ahead of everybody. We shortened it because the characters just seemed like they were... The audience already knows who Dolarhyde is at this point. We held him back for as long as we could, but once we've shown him, the audience is just getting ahead of you. - That's my favorite shot!

55:10 · jump to transcript →

that they aren't as lavish, they aren't as stylized. You'll notice here earlier, for example, that shot, you know, in all Tinto Brass films, usually there's a scene where characters are framed by windows that usually tends to pop up a lot. But in this one, it's much more natural. You sort of have this natural landscape behind them, whereas instead, before, you had these sort of stylized backdrops with sort of the crazy colorful lighting and things like that. You don't get much of that in this film. It's much more kind of very golden, natural sunlight, like you see here in the shower scene, for example. It's not quite as stylized as he would have done in the past. There is one scene coming up later on that's very strong red lighting,

27:00 · jump to transcript →

you know, very much part of the brass world, something you don't really feel in subsequent films. Fallo, for example, doesn't really have that sort of brass light, that sort of very recognizable lighting, despite a very competent cinematographer such as Federico Del Zoppo, who had actually worked back in the 70s with brass as a camera operator,

41:28 · jump to transcript →

Here, Di Venanzo manages to still keep the film very coherent with the Brass world, and I think does a good job. Di Venanzo actually mentions his favorite work with Brass is The Voyeur. He considers The Voyeur to be the best lit film out of the ones he made for Brass. But still, this one has a very...

41:57 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

small or inexpensive lighting package. Yanni's guys are downstairs? Yes, come in. So we had music that seemed to suit that atmosphere. And Natasha played her entrance with tremendous style. Yanni sent me to see if you were on the level.

30:48 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

I would hate to... I would really hate to have to kill you. I would hate it. I hate it more than mayonnaise. You know how much I hate mayonnaise. In order to make the lighting go faster, we went for deep tones on the walls. You can see the deep blue behind them. It made it quicker for David to light the scenes. We were always in a tremendous hurry.

57:01 · jump to transcript →

Jonathan Lynn

expect. For me, some of the comedy of the scene lies in the fact that it's not lit in a kind of spooky way, but the fact that these macabre happenings are all taking place in ordinary light as if it's ordinary daily activity. That's what Harry Lefkowitz thought. What happened to Harry Lefkowitz? I don't want to know what happened to Harry Lefkowitz.

1:09:27 · jump to transcript →

Ridley Scott

All these rooms in the Palazzo Vecchio are magnificent. They were all the, you know, the palace, I guess, was, I'm not sure, absolutely, but I think it was Parmedici. And so the rooms are stunning. And if you're having a lecture in there, you know, and the room was lit by a projector, then you'd have this kind of almost, you know, candlelight, actually.

1:14:23 · jump to transcript →

Ridley Scott

And add to the mood in the room, I add some candles. They had candles in there, so I just lit them. But they really believe in living with that, you know, culture of their past. They're very conscious of their past and very conscious of what they have around them and how beautiful it all is.

1:14:52 · jump to transcript →

Ridley Scott

The Third Man, that's one of my favorite films. And I kind of would like this to have been at night. Would have been more dramatic. And I liked it to have been lit so I could control the lighting with such dramatic scale like The Third Man. But we couldn't do that either. We couldn't control it. We couldn't afford to do that. And the amount of lighting it would require to light at night would have been enormous. So that went out the window. But basically, I think it works out fine.

1:36:31 · jump to transcript →

What I love about the beacons is the concept of who actually are the guys who have to sit up there all day long with some matches or a flint waiting to set light to them. And I imagine that it's been hundreds of years and these things have never been lit. It's a job that gets passed down from father to son. And some old man hands his young son the matches and says, now it's your turn, my boy.

1:05:00 · jump to transcript →

people have to do before they get a real career. When Pippin and Gandalf were writing to Minas Tirith the beacons were already lit so we obviously changed the position in the story for our beacon sequence. A lot of the flames that we see in the distance are little CG flames that we added in post-production. The beacon that you're looking at here was actually built on the mountains and we helicoptered the beacon in and the little hut that these guys live in and we

1:05:49 · jump to transcript →

And we're having to go somewhere else, not to Gondor, which you would normally do in a film. You'd have them all set off for Gondor. But in actual fact, we needed them to go to Dunharrow, which again took quite a bit of sleight of hand. And that's how you explain that to an audience, to say, well, they're rushing off. They've got the emergency beacons have been lit now, and they've got to rush off to help the Gondor. But no, they're actually just going to pop off to a place called Dunharrow that we don't know nothing about and wait for a while instead of rushing.

1:08:06 · jump to transcript →

It wasn't necessarily physically accurate in terms of the size of the blades and the helicopters, and there were certain things that we had to account for when we actually were shooting it. Practical and with ILM physics. And also just the fact that we were shooting, you know, nighttime, these windmills that are not normally lit. If you noticed, we had to light all those windmills, and that was Vic Armstrong, to the T, giving us what the animatic required, you know, on all of these exterior shots.

23:54 · jump to transcript →

This is all downtown LA inside the truck. And this is downtown LA at Lower Grand, which Scott Chambliss dressed with lights. In fact, if you look down the roadway behind you guys, we did sort of forced perspective lighting to make it look as if

1:31:13 · jump to transcript →

See how the buildings are lit? We actually had to get permission from the Chinese government to get those buildings lit so that they'd stay lit. Vang and Maggie and Jonathan came to China basically for that... Just for that shot. And I won't see you back home. Better get back.

1:33:36 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, it was always, you know, we were wondering how that was going to look and does it explode in just a spray and a splat? Do we see chunks? Actually, a lot of thought goes into just how somebody's head gets cut off. This was a reshoot for lighting-wise. We did Kate's close-ups. We shot actually, I think, the last day of shooting. We did some of those over.

15:58 · jump to transcript →

really small you make it look really big though this is a 14 mil lens yeah and whenever you whenever you put on a wide lens on that but it was really really i i loved how the satellite it was it was kind of for us it was sort of a nothing yeah it was the last we didn't we didn't really give it that much um and he comes he comes out i think the lighting looks great in there yeah i agree yeah another compliment

20:56 · jump to transcript →

But we landed him, I think that was maybe a 14 lens that we shot it on. He landed a foot from camera consistently every time. CG for the folding back there. Actually, CG for the wing, period, on this shot. That's right, yeah. The wings are CG and the rest is makeup and the guy, stunt guy in a suit. And it's a good trick to have the texture and the lighting and everything on Marcus' suit, which I think really

29:47 · 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 →

fantastic example of Hoyte van Hoytema, the director of cinematography. His very special way of lighting and the light comes from very high above to sort of recreate the feeling of moonlight. So there is almost

34:28 · jump to transcript →

no shadows anywhere and you really cannot see any particular direction from the light so it's extremely soft lighting. Which also makes this scene even more effective. It's this sort of scene where you would have played with light and shadow to make it more dramatic. Yeah, that would be the most obvious way to do it. This makes it very mundane.

34:55 · jump to transcript →

Kat Ellinger

totally surrender themselves to these very primal instincts the instincts to have sex the instincts to be violent with the aspect of sex and the fact that you have all this unsimulated sex as well it's really interesting the director's approach to how they decided to frame this because the film was made completely with natural lighting and

36:28 · jump to transcript →

Kat Ellinger

the way that the unsimulated sex is framed then is so without lighting and if you think of mainstream pornography it's very artificial usually nowadays and this was certainly a shift in the industry throughout the millennium to these very artificial types of bodies women were made to look very artificial loads of makeup

37:21 · jump to transcript →

Kat Ellinger

Lots of lighting to bring in this glamour aspect. And Baise-moi does almost the opposite of that. Even when the girls are dressed up to be sexy and alluring, there's something about them that is unartificial. Even when they put on their own artifice, they look completely natural. Even with makeup, they're not too made up. The scenes are not heavily lit.

37:51 · jump to transcript →

They haven't talked yet about the lighting style of the film, and particularly your choice of Peter Pau as a director of photography, and how this relates to some of the world. Seeing like Lizzie go totally artistic, the oil painting, what have you, Bermuda, Hammershaw,

46:23 · jump to transcript →

You know, glaciers, streams, and also the lighting. He's lighting a lot on their faces here. Because it's so baggy, the glacier, so much reflection. But it gives it a very, you know, mystical kind of feel. This was a miserable day, first day. We did the opening ceremony, we prayed to the water, which symbolized money.

1:10:23 · jump to transcript →

And we measured the place of the outer court. That's right. And built another set. In Beijing. In Beijing. Yeah. Now here's again something that Western audiences don't follow, that she's lighting incense for her- That place she could not marry for all her life. Right. For the- For her dead husband. Her dead, yeah, fiance. Husband. Husband, fiance. That's the same thing back then. Well, it's starting to be the same thing now.

1:27:04 · jump to transcript →

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?

23:26 · jump to transcript →

to get this whole thing in. And... How much did you control the lighting? I mean, it's a real movie, so you weren't dealing with true indie, like, guerrilla filmmaking, but were you real concerned about that from a lighting design, from your visual design for the film? I had no idea what I was doing. I can't say that I had any idea. Well, that's good. You know, it was simply a situation Dick and I spoke about.

56:11 · jump to transcript →

And how economic, how efficient he is. Look at the lighting there. It's like the coloring is so 70s. And her screams are so real. What did you say? It's like a seal being killed. She said, I don't think I got it on that one. I said, Juliette, it sounds like someone sawing a seal in half. You got it. We can go home now. The great thing about this whole scene, everything that happened here, I threw everything out that was scripted, largely because it was bad. And I went with...

1:29:40 · jump to transcript →

Pete, you were talking about some of the women vocalists that were around and things like that. I said all the dwarves were male and that's when your eyes lit up and said, a male choir. You were thinking of the great Welsh mining choirs. It took off from there and then of course Howard managed to find an incredible Polynesian choir here in New Zealand. We have a sequence coming up which was cut

2:05:04 · jump to transcript →

I think it usually appears in quite a different type of video. Alex Funke did a wonderful job of lighting these miniatures that we're looking at. The only computer part are the people running and the column that crashes down is the only computer part. Everything else is a miniature. This is one of my favourite shots. I was so excited to see this. This is a great shot. The music is wonderful here too. The Balrog was always difficult. He was a real problem.

2:25:04 · jump to transcript →

large model trees, huge big model trees that were shot and the people were composited and they were computer people that were walking up the stairs there. This was, Paul is saying, did a lot of conceptual artwork for this. Yes, Paul did a couple of wonderful paintings of Lothlorien that we really took the look from his paintings, the way that the lighting.

2:33:25 · jump to transcript →

even as an adult, always returned to as part of your childhood or something, the feeling of going back there. Hence it's kind of lit to be yellow and the feeling of warmth and, you know, the way you remember your childhood really, I suppose. So the music here is Abide With Me, which is a...

22:58 · jump to transcript →

And he agreed if we signed some posters for him. He's a big fan of train spotting. He would let us use the store too. And we filmed through the night in it. And we did this very interesting thing, which is that we didn't light it. It's actually self-lit by overhead neons. And what we decided to do is that the only way that we could do it in the time to get a scene shot was to actually remove, avoid the neon lights as much as possible. And then in shots like that,

47:27 · jump to transcript →

the clear, the digital house, we'd paint them out, the neon lights. So they're actually self-lit by the lights in the supermarket store. So we didn't have to do any lighting, but they just took it all out in post and we tried to avoid it as much as possible. That was a little Homer Simpson homage there. And in a way, the whole scene is a respectful nod towards George Romero's Dawn of the Dead set in a shopping mall, which is...

47:53 · jump to transcript →

The Chinese characters for John, what is it again? Help me. We were very careful about all of our characters' decor. All the actors had input. I really like the lighting in this scene for some reason. I just love those. This is our first day of shooting. This is our very first day of shooting. We're so excited. First scene. It was a rough day. I loved arriving on set with you guys in the van.

10:25 · jump to transcript →

It was a combination of public domain. And Jay's domain. And Jay's domain. And also, as you'll see in the deleted scenes, originally the stalker is on the phone while watching the national anthem. We have some patriotic themes in this film. Sook-Yin Lee demanded we shoot this before we had finished lighting. Because why? Well, because I wanted to, you know, I wanted to be for real.

37:48 · jump to transcript →

You got it. Yeah. Paul was outside the window. Yeah, I was really in the other window. Really? He was right there. That lighting is so gorgeous. I know. I was trying to figure it out so they could actually look into each other's eyes. They did for some shots, but others they had to imagine, but luckily they imagined really good. Yeah, it's like John Travolta and the Boy in the Plastic Bubble.

1:27:39 · jump to transcript →

I really love how that was lit. Yeah, well, that scene really is amazing looking. I mean, that's John Toll doing his thing and finding just like a little pinpoint on your eye. Makes my eyes rain. Oh, dang. Gilligan catching a kidney shot.

1:12:39 · jump to transcript →

Get the thread up. It doesn't look like you're really threading the needle. And you don't even give a fuck in the scene. Man, you was tripping on him. I felt like John Toll, the cinematographer, put a little extra effort and magical mustard sauce on the lighting of this. Yeah. Because he's known as the greatest outdoor cinematographer ever.

1:16:58 · jump to transcript →

And I think he bristles a little bit when people always put the outdoor at the front of his title. Yeah, bullshit. He's like, yeah, well, check this out. This is indoor. What do you think about this? Boom. I have to say I was blown away as much, if not more, by the interior lighting that he did on the movie, especially in that cell and all that stuff. What's sad is I think I was trying to suck in the gut as much as I could when the camera was on me. Man, I don't mind your titties. There you go. I mean, I look right at them.

1:17:23 · jump to transcript →

The fights are really nice in this picture, Patrick. They're really on par with the other two, certainly. Allan Poppleton was our New Zealand stunt coordinator. He did a fantastic job. - He did a great job, yeah. So, what you're seeing here is actually the set... ... you're gonna see later in the movie, an early stage of the castle. We tried to minimalise the dressing so it felt a little different. But it's basically the same space that you'll see later. And this was the first day of shooting. - Yeah, the balcony part. Yup. The big reveal. Wanna tell you a story about the castle. The castle is such a gigantic structure. Of course, there was no way to build this. We ended up building the, what you would call, the courtyard of the castle. How many feet tall, Richard? - About 20 feet. Twenty-five, 30 feet, yeah. Which was a little challenging for the lighting... ...because we were there on top of the set. When we started, it was difficult for CGI guys to kind of extend that. Yeah, it was terrible for Sound too. Every time it rained, we'd stop shooting. The train outside, the train station? - Yeah, the train... Note to self: Do not build set next to railroad tracks next time. We have a few transformation... ...but this one actually is not a transformation. It looks like one, but everything is practical. There's nothing mechanical or anything. I love it. It's a little more American Werewolf in London approach. There is no CG help whatsoever, though. Unlike the others.... This took a while to get right, just this whole prelude... ...and Kate's voiceover, and getting people caught up. There is a lot of history, and to decide, you know, where exactly to start... ...and how much to prep it with. Hopefully, we covered everything we needed to. It looks like we moved really quickly through. I wish we had a little bit more space, a little bit more in the... Yeah. - There's so much story to....

1:59 · jump to transcript →

There's nobody else that could deliver a line like that. Right. You think about it, you don't see him often with blood around the mouth. It's so great to have those moments. There's one moment where Bill is sipping blood on a cup. And that was really kind of like almost a request. "Wouldn't it be great if we see actually us--?" You know, sometimes you just out this aside... ...and work on the rest of the story, but it's so important. This was all day for night. Day for night, yeah. All the night stuff in the forest. One of those things that you're really nervous is not gonna work. But it did. Actually, I do like that look here. It's actually more natural. We all grew up watching these heavily lit night outdoor scenes. So you think that's what's normal. But this is actually what your eye would actually see in the dark. This is more close to the way it actually Is.

54:43 · jump to transcript →

Remember, that was gonna be a much bigger scene too. That's not two stunt doubles. We did this again. That's another one we pulled. So you know that set you're looking at, the underworld of the castle? The underground part is actually the same wall... ...we used to make the canyon at the beginning for Sonja. Now, Patrick, explain this. Some people have asked me what Viktor is holding. I was tempted to cut that out. We built a doll as something he give to his daughter. The only time you see it before that is in the memory. It is there. I think it's just a wide shot. It's also there when he gives her the necklace. Yeah. - But you don't... We haven't been able... At one point, I was ready to lose that. I thought... But it is something he gives the daughter. I have a question here. What is in these barrels? I never quite figured that out. It's kind of like some very special oil... ... from mediaeval time. Like mediaeval napalm or something? What's in those barrels is me going that we have... ...No different kind of... You know, we can't do just swordplay after swordplay. It's some kind of explosion element, mediaeval version. Yeah, we need to have that. I think this scene works great. It's very successful. I love him screaming against the door, there's so much energy there. I tried to have him have a little dialogue moment here. Just didn't work. - No, it didn't work. It just felt totally awkward, so. There's something about them looking at each other... ... that they have a poignant... Now the rain. Pain in the ass, but I think it worked well. It worked very well. Everything that's a pain in the ass looks better. And conversely, everything that looks good is a pain in the ass. All the elements of snow and wind and fire and all that. Remember on the first Underworld... ... you were adamant about wanting... ...a lot of these scenes to happen in the rain. "No, dude, we can't do it. It's gonna be such a--" And you stuck to your guns. Thank God you did. It looked great. Do you remember how much I had to fight for that rain? Yes, I do. When you're on the same set for the entire movie... ... you'd better find ways to reinvent it. And the rain was one way for us to give it a different tone. I just think that something horribly... Just tragic happened... ...1n Richard's life with rain. Did you have the same problem on number one? But it does. It makes everything a kind of a nightmare to... The equipment... - But the result is... Hey, two words: Romania, winter. Imagine if we had had to shoot this in Romania in the winter. But the other thing that you get with the rain is you're able to do.... Have your stunt doubles replacing these primary actors... ... 1M a way so that you really don't even know the difference. I can't picture this in a dry... I mean, this gives such a different energy. Yes. And the lighting on top of that. Just flashes and... All right, next movie I won't argue about the rain, I promise. It's about time, Richard.

1:00:19 · jump to transcript →

We had to use our computer to recolour his nose because for some reason the lighting that we were using didn't bounce too well off the rubber and it made his nose look black. No, we had nose rot problems. Did you have nose rot? There was a tense week where we were waiting on the verdict from Weta as to whether they could recolourise his nose or we had to reshoot. Right.

1:02:32 · jump to transcript →

And the concept of lighting the Iterus set for night shooting was just beyond anybody's comprehension of having to drag huge, big dinos and 10K lights and stuff up there to light this thing at night in those strong winds. That's why Iterus is only ever seen in the daytime. We don't have any night scenes there because we just couldn't light it. Now, the shot of Legolas jumping on the horse has obviously become quite a favorite with people. It was a complete accident because Orlando Bloom had fallen

1:56:55 · jump to transcript →

Colin was responsible for remembering that he had a Stutter in this role. Oh, God. - And often we'd do a whole scene and then he'd say, "Oh, Ch-Christ. I've got a stutter. "We'd better go back and do it again." -/ love this girl in this film. - Yeah, she is so wonderful. We got a bunch of audition tapes from Portugal, about 50 people and it looked as though it had been done in a sort of meat-packing house or a slaughterhouse, so depressing. And there were about 50 of them and she just had this particular quality of... You mean depressingly lit? - Yeah. They were good actors and actresses. - Lots of good actors and actresses, but depressingly lit. - Yeah. But she had this fantastic quality of this absolute simplicity which you see here and then the moment that she smiled, this radiant personality. 'Cause we had to be careful that she didnt, in this first scene, you didn't instantly go, "For heaven's sake. We're definitely going to have a love story here." You had to not think it at first.

38:05 · jump to transcript →

There's Monty Python's book there, dropped in. She's not a very good cook. She may be a nice girl. We had long discussions, Joanna and I, about what Keira should be wearing. about what Keira should be wearing. I said no one would be wearing something as attractive as this just casually at home, and she said, "] promise you, it's the right decision." I think she was right. Look how much trouble Mickey Coulter has taken lighting her face in this scene. And look how much trouble he took lighting my face. Or, indeed, Andrew's, but we were all so enjoying Keira's shot that we did 17 takes of Keira, and then Andrew had a couple of stabs at it.

1:36:34 · jump to transcript →

You got off lightly with the costumes. - Me? Yeah, you. - I had one. Well, then I got screwed. Why? - With my second costume. I remember some producer trying to get him into a beige cardigan. What was it? - Yeah. Yeah. That was the first time I ever met you. That's right. Horrifying. - Yeah, I think Richard had brought in.... We were talking about how much rain there was going to be... ...and all of that. And so he comes in with a... I think it was a beige sweater from... I think it was, like, a Gap sweater. I wasn't liking it. No offence to Richard. That was quite funny. We used to have meetings about whether we should shave you or not. We still do. - Oh, we did. What, shaving my face, my head? Do you know we had conversations about that? We did the test. We did a test, you still had the scruff... But it looked stupid. With the lighting, it didn't look right. I agree. No, actually, I remember, because we... - You couldn't decide. You were so damned attractive. Because we went up to my room, and we checked oult.... We checked out that tape. And there was some younger pictures of you. Oh, yeah, those horrifying... - No, you looked nice. I think I didn't decide to actually shave your beard until the day... ...of the first-- The first day. - Pretty much. Who's that? What's going... - That's your best friend. Have you seen this movie, Scott? - Who is that guy? What was his name? - Oh, him. Erwin. Erwin. - Erwin Leder. Loved him. - Erwin, the set poet. How do you pronounce his name? - Leder. Yeah, it is, right? - Yeah, I guess. He wrote, like, three poems a day. He did? - Yeah, he did. Did you read them, ever? Well, a lot of them were in German, so I had a good try.

17:50 · jump to transcript →

Just telling him that-- Just knowing that things are kind of screwing up... ...and he has to put... Because we had to explain... ...Why Singe was following you to the mansion. And why was he, again? - I don't remember. What's that? - Oh, shut up. Okay. - So this is-- Here we go. This is.... This is the new scene, here. - This is one we only got two takes... ...and you liked the first, and I made you do another. You were a pain in the ass about that. I remember. I think you were like, "This is cut." You did that with a lot of things. - I know, but I only did one take on this. I would be completely happy and say, "Okay, this is good." And Scott would just be torturing himself. I just like to do... - Drive me crazy. Well, sometimes that's the best one. You say you got it, and you have one just to do. Not with you. - Not with me, obviously. As much as it makes you feel good, I used take one of everything you did. No, you didn't. - No. No, you didn't. - Actually, in all seriousness... ...I did love this scene. I thought you did a great job. And I fought for quite a long time to keep it in... ...and the biggest reason was pacing, because it is the longest scene we cult. Your chin looks fabulous. - Because the lighting is good. And it was great hair. - Good harr. I was sad to see it go. - It's good to have you back, Scotty. No problem. - Now it makes sense why you got... ...an American in Budapest. - Oh, yeah. But we never said it was Budapest. You're right. It's not supposed to be Budapest. What did you say? "I just came here." You just keep it ambiguous, right? Yeah. He's non-specific. We were having a discussion about whether Scott is throaty. Oh, please. - I am throaty. I'm not saying I'm mad. I'm not terrible in this movie. I've been worse in other things, throaty-wise.

1:02:38 · jump to transcript →

Noah Baumbach

And Bill's reading one of your actual notebooks. Yes, the notebooks in this-- Jane's notebooks are modeled on the notebooks that these movies are written in. So The Life Aquatic is-- Originally, while we would sit here talking, I would write everything down in longhand in these notebooks like this, then take it home and type it up, then bring in the pages next day, then we'd write more in the notebook, more on the pages. That's what the notebook-- I mean, I guess it's worth noting that the way we write these things or not, we don't both do separate scenes and then bring them in together and try and sort of edit them or anything. We actually come up with everything together in the room. I mean, stuff is done later in rewriting or when you're directing and stuff, but... You know, it is a... We make the story sitting here together. Yeah, in Jane's notebooks. - Yeah, in Jane's notebooks. Why don't we talk about some of the people who work on these films? Maybe we start with Robert Yeoman, the cinematographer. He shot all my films, Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and Royal Tenenbaums, as well as your most recent film. The Squid and the Whale, yeah. Yeah, from my perspective, I tried to hire Bob for the first movie I did, Kicking & Screaming, and... Only to hear later that he was shooting a movie called Bottle Rocket by some neophyte Texan writer, director, actors. Yeah, I think we both probably responded strongly to Drugstore Cowboy, which was a film Bob had shot. - Right. And, you know, Bob, he lights his movies, he's drawn to very natural lighting, and I feel like he's sort of a Nestor Almendros kind of... His style of director of photography. He's also a very good operator, camera operator. He's great at hand-holding and he knows how to get the image. And he's tireless too. This is probably a good-- Now we're underwater, in the underwater forest, a good time to talk about Mark Friedberg. And you did this in a tank in Cinecittà? Yes, this is in a tank, where we built this undersea forest, and it was very difficult to do. It's hard to keep the water clean, hard to get the temperature right. You've got to build the whole thing, and the set starts to disintegrate. It's very complicated, but a bizarrely exciting thing to film. You know, it's just a crazy experience. And, you know, it's very-- It's-- You know, it looks fake and... It's fake to X degree, and not fake to some other degree, although it's pretty fake. And the thing we liked the most here was we took a scene that could be staged in a broom closet somewhere or in somebody's living room, but we just put the scene at the bottom of the ocean, where they have to push buttons to say each sentence. It's just really a scene about, "Can I call you 'Dad'?" And, "No, you can't." Yeah, I think maybe we'd initially written this scene on deck-- - On land. Yeah. - And then... Then we decided to go underwater with it. It's also a scene where we sort of, you know, where Zissou manipulates-- We get to see Zissou sort of first-hand manipulate the reality of his film. Yes, we see how it works. We're restaging.

52:14 · jump to transcript →

Noah Baumbach

Willem is very touching here. Yeah, Willem brings something to it. Now, I mentioned Noah Taylor. Noah has obviously played a lot of much bigger, fuller roles. And he's a really wonderful actor. In our movie, he has a line here, a line there. But his presence on the set was quite strong and he was very-- He was really valuable to the movie in ways that you wouldn't know. He was sort of the one who-- There are a lot of non-actors in Team Zissou and he was the one-- A lot of people who had never been on movie sets and certainly a lot of people who had never been sent away to location for periods of time, and he was their guide for that, and he was kind of their acting coach too. And he was-- He was a great person to have on the set. Well, pretty much everyone... Cast and crew really committed to, you know, be sort of immersed in this for months. There wasn't-- I guess some actors came in and out a little bit, but certainly most of Team Zissou had to be there for the whole shoot. Yeah. See, in the background here is a cane with a dolphin, albino dolphin handle. Zissou has albino dolphins, but it's-- What you can't see is engraved in it is "T.E. Mandrake," Zissou's mentor. Right, we saw in-- The picture was behind Hennessey, when they were on the boat, in the background. Right. And actually the person who sort of plays that part in the photographs is Jacques Henri Lartigue, a French photographer who I've always admired. But the person we wanted to use was Nic Roeg, the director Nic Roeg, who we weren't able to get over to Italy. It was all kind of last minute, and he-- But you were always gonna pose him in the same position that Lartigue is in that picture, right? Holding the... Well, yeah, we were gonna pose him-- No, I mean, we were gonna pose him in the water... standing in the water with a fishing net and a kid running behind him, something like that. What the painting is, when you see the painting. Now, this shot in the hallway, by the way, is the only shot in the movie where we actually use the camera to suggest that the boat is moving. It kind of rocks back and forth, which is funny because we watched a lot of different movies that are about-- Set on boats and set underwater, those things, and they all use a different technique. There are lots of different-- They gimbal the whole set, or they make the camera move. The Black Stallion was one of the ones we liked, and those scenes on that one, they don't do anything to suggest. They just trust that you know we're on a boat, and it works the same way as any of the others, except for one shot where they look down a hallway when they rock the camera. I don't know why they had one shot to do that. I think because the boat is sinking, and they wanted to just get that feeling. But we did the same thing. We never did anything to suggest we were on a boat in terms of movement. But for one shot, we made it rock back and forth. I remember when we were looking at some of those undersea movies or movies-- People on boats, The Abyss commentary taught us the term "dry for wet." Yes, yes. The Abyss taught us dry for wet. The other person I learned dry for wet from was Roman Coppola. Who, Roman, early on I asked his advice about some of the things, and Roman was very excited about the movie. Roman knows a lot about things like stop-motion and dry for wet, which is shooting underwater without water, using smoke and lighting to suggest that you're underwater. Which you can only do with miniatures, you can't use actors. You can't use people, although it's been done. In wet-- In crazy suits. - Really? The way you'd shoot, like, the moon.

1:09:43 · jump to transcript →