The long take

And then this morning, the day we shot this was the next day, and just the principal actors and myself had sort of a bonding lunch to try to see what, you know, was the difficulty. And we got sort of, it became like a love fest, and we got all giddy, and this giddiness carried over into the scene because none of the actors could stop laughing. That shot really plays it there. You could see that there was a lot of laughing on the set that day. It was hard to get anybody to be serious. I was not able to get one take...

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But I like it's played in one take, and I like the hourglass sort of configuration. There are two faces in the space between. Yes, because their noses are so similar, as you can see. Gabriel's got, like, all the right flaws to make a face incredibly beautiful. This actually builds up to my favorite Gabriel moment in the film.

28:38 · jump to transcript →

But in one take, he flicks the cigarette right into Baldwin's eye while it's flaming. And he freaked out and jumped at him and sort of shut the scene off. But I had a B camera on Benicio, so I was able to use the take where Baldwin gets hit in the eye. Right there. So that's real. There's no stunt involved in that cigarette hitting him in the eye. Yeah.

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Darren Aronofsky

One take, I was like, Sean, just keep saying 1-8, 1-8, 1-8, and walk down the stairs the whole way. And when he did it, everyone applauded. It was really great. This shot, the Tai Chi shot, is perhaps my favorite shot in the film. And it was actually improvised. We showed up on set at 8, 9 AM. And there was a bunch of people doing Tai Chi. And I talked to my first AD, Laura Zuckman. I was like, let's shoot it. Let's get them. And they were up for it. So we did it.

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Darren Aronofsky

It was interesting, Sean did a really great performance thing here. On one take, he took a really mellow get out, like a pleading get out to Devi, and we almost used it, but we didn't want him to break down yet. We wanted him to still be like, you know, rocketing towards his insane breakdown. Look closely at the newspaper.

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Darren Aronofsky

wondering if this was really happening. So people often ask me how we did the drill shot, and my answer is that Sean's a method actor. We did one take and rushed him to the hospital. Luckily, we had ambulances standing by. Literally, this was one take. I won't tell you how it's done.

1:18:47 · jump to transcript →

We only shot one take, that's it. Rachel's now crawling in as the stuntwoman is crawling under the camera and I told her to stand up and perfect. Take one, one take only, that's it. 12,000 bucks. Steve called me from the location saying, okay, so what does it look like? Do we need to shoot it again? And I thought, well, I'm not sure what else you'd do to that shot. I think it's about as good as it could be. Yeah, it was a real pain because we arrived on the set

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His speech, and I suddenly, we're all getting really tired here, and we're looking at each other, and I suddenly realized that his speech was taking forever, and I just went, oh my God, I walked up to Jonathan, and I said, Jonathan, you know, this speech is taking a long, long time. I'm going to have to cut around it. And he just looked at me, smiled, nodded, and we did the speech, and he picked it up really quickly, and we did it all in one take. We never cut away from him. It's a speech that's coming up in a little while.

54:04 · jump to transcript →

in front of the others, it's a problem. So you have to do it in such a way. And it was a very big negotiation. So the reason why that scene had to be done in one take through the underground labyrinth of this world and then to emerge in the spotlight like a king, you know, king and queen, this was the highest he could aspire to. And he hit it at a very young age.

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There he is! Now, if you freeze the film as Joe Pesci flips... ... you can actually see the stuntman Troy's face. Troy. - Through the magic of DVD. But don't do that. - No, don't. It ruins the magic of the film. - Yeah. The-- This-- Dan Stern willingly... Today, again, this would be added digitally. He agreed to have this spider put on his face for one take. Yeah, it wasn't even my hand. And he couldn't really scream. He's not screaming... ... he's just miming it. And we added it later because It would've frightened the spider. That's how concerned we were. Again, I have to say, comedically, another favorite moment of mine... ...when Dan is about to hit Joe with this crowbar coming up. see this is-- Again, the film works so well, I think, for kids... ...because it's wish fulfillment. Again, it's, like, every kid's dream is to be able to do this. But if they tried at home, the consequences could be dire. Don't do that, kids. This is great. Just the way he says, "Don't move." He's committed to this role.

1:25:20 · jump to transcript →

Was Fincher on set when you puppeteered those shots? For some of it, not all of it. But Laine Liska and his four cronies, Bill Hedge and... Forgotten the other guys' names now. Rick Fichter was my cosupervisor on the show. Did real good work. There's another good shot comin' up here where it runs across the railroad tracks. For some of these, you had plates shot, where I would run through the scene in the alien suit, for lighting reference. And I remember this one, running through, and I had to... I was almost blind in the costume, looking out through holes in the neck. And I had to run over the tracks, and also make it through the doorway, and there was at least one take, where I slammed into the side of the door. I was bruised for weeks. My whole shoulder. Slammed into it at full speed. In the take I bounce back, take a couple steps, and then run through the door. Here he comes. This shot is over in about... It's comin' up. I was disappointed you didn't have the model alien bounce off the wall. There he goes. 20 frames. - If that, huh? The very warm light at the far end of the set, I had red filters on the lamps to try and suggest heat cos they're trying to induce the alien into that pit so they can destroy it with the molten lead. So I was trying to give the feeling of terrific heat in there.

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I think it was right next to where Jenny was doing her suicide. That's right. One, take good care of your feet. Two, try not to do anything stupid. Lieutenant Dan was so difficult to cast, in a sense, because we had to depict a character who went through an incredible transformation. He had to be very hard and not in touch with himself and really harsh on our main character.

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That's a stunt guy, the other guy. Harrison is real. That's Harrison. This was all one take? No, it was numerous takes. Oh, we shot it for one day, as I said. Here, he throws Harrison. That's Harrison. That's Harrison. There's nothing with a double. The other guy, he has a double. That's a hard kick. This is some major dental work coming up for that guy.

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Alexander Payne

I want to point out that Reese actually fell and did that little stunt very well in one take. She didn't want to rely on a stunt person, and I didn't want to have to do that either. I like seeing the real thing, and we patted her a little bit, but she did it.

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