Pacing & rhythm

Taylor Hackford

And Mary Ann, who's innocent, just like she was in the beginning... ...she's right alongside. What I wanted to do at the end of this film, and that's why at this point... ...you see Neal Jones morph into Al Pacino... ...you realize you can't beat the devil every time. You might win one battle, but he's back there the next morning. I would not leave this film with you having a happy ending. I did that with Officer and a Gentleman. I want to basically say: Every single day of your life you can't get smug... ...and you have to confront morality. I think we all do. And that's why this is a moral tale. I'm not deeply religious and I don't think of this as a religious film... ...but I do think that it is a film of somebody who still feels... ...a certain idealism, and a realization that we have responsibilities in our life. And I think that all the people that worked on the film worked on it... ...in a fairly righteous way. You know, Andrew Neiderman wrote a novel at the beginning. Four writers contributed to the screenplay. And I want to mention the people I haven't mentioned. There's Mark Warner... ...who is my collaborator, my editor, fabulous collaborator through... ...this process. You can feel the pace of this film. Everybody put themselves into something here. I also want to give credit to Per Hallberg, who was the sound designer. All the way through this I think there are subtle effects in addition to the score... ...that really give you the feeling that there is something else going on. There are a lot of artists that worked on this film, and when you go through... ...the process of collaboration, you have a vision as a film maker... ...and you want to get that vision on the screen. But you can't do it alone. I know it's trite to say this, but you utilize... ...and when someone has a great idea, you grab it. I encourage that, and I worked with a wonderful group of collaborators... ...on this film, and I'm very proud of it. After having gone and talked for two hours here, almost nonstop... ...this must be a lot of dribble. I apologize if, in fact, it's gone on... ...ad nauseam, but, again, we had an opportunity to make a film. I appreciate Warner Bros. was very tough to work for. We had a lot of disagreements, but they did allow me to make a film... ...and, they did, ultimately, give me final cut of the film... ...so that I was able to make the film I wanted. No excuses. I'm very proud of it. I hope you enjoyed it. Subtitles conformed by SOFTITLER

2:17:38 · jump to transcript →

Peter Hyams

A gift from your daughter? Hm? Amy? Don't stay in there too long, you'll turn into a prune. Emily. Come on, darling, it's time to get out. For this flashback, the walls were painted lighter.

1:10:29 · jump to transcript →

to actors or stuntmen to bang the, to get the rhythm right. Right, so there's no real definition to it. And unless you're training for eight, ten years, it doesn't look like anything. Right. It's very difficult if you want to get it right. And it's elastic. It's hard. Mr. Yuen Ho-Ping told me he never, of his career, like 30, 40 years, he never really done sword. It's hard.

12:56 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

Too slow, ladies. Too slow. Come on. That's it. Count it down. The timing needs to be exact. Also, the sets were so big that we would get our own weather systems within them. So late in the afternoon, sometimes we had clouds of mist gathering in the ceilings and...

48:50 · jump to transcript →

These scenes are always a nightmare for when you film them. Dinner party scenes, because it's all about left to right, right to left. Who's he looking at when he's looking that way? And you end up, basically, the truth is, no matter who you are, you end up going round the table, shooting everybody, and you double up sometimes because you want to make sure the editor's got enough in editing where the editor can control the pace of the scene and shape it a bit, you know? But it's basically...

1:14:58 · jump to transcript →

create a kind of acceleration in the pace, then you have this kind of understanding of our grasp on the physical reality in which these men are inhabiting. And I think it helps a lot in your kind of innate understanding of what they're going through. I mean, we expected an audience to understand

1:48:47 · jump to transcript →

That was a much longer scene too. I thought that was a good scene. In its original form. I mean, I think it's still a good scene. You mean it's run now? No, no, no, I don't mean that. I mean, you know, we had to cut it because it was way too long. But I think it worked, if it were just a short movie. Yeah, exactly. No, it's what I thought when we projected the scene. It was really totally captivating. It's just when you put the whole movie together, you have to find somewhere to cut that. Yeah.

49:03 · jump to transcript →

but I buy it and I know it's fake. One of the few scenes we cut out of the film was Yuri and Ava's wedding. It was supposed to follow this scene. It was shot at the same synagogue where Yuri meets his first gun-running contact. But the wedding scene sort of slowed the pace of the film, even though it has a funny moment.

31:36 · jump to transcript →

It threw us forward. The thing is that Ving, of course, couldn't be driving doing that. That was a stunt driver driving. And as soon as the camera went away from the car, Ving ran in. He was off camera. God, what is that? You can't hear that? What's wrong with her? Now, Carrie really set the pace for me later when I have that in my head... ...because I basically just did her version.

21:39 · jump to transcript →

This was fun. And we actually did this in really long takes. So we pretty much would shoot everything from them coming through the crowd and down and out here and up to the helicopter and into the helicopter in one, which was kind of fun that we set them up as big masters and let everything run. And obviously it goes without saying, so I'll say it anyway. The movie alternates between really intimate and really giant, which is a fun rhythm. And this was...

42:12 · jump to transcript →

But this struck me when the first time I saw the finished movie as a very brave shot to do, to include this, this very, very, very long shot of his face crying. Yeah, it's too long. But on purpose, too long. It's a way to start again, to give us a blank page for a short time, isn't it?

1:40:46 · jump to transcript →

Patrick Tatopoulos

This was all a... A restructure edit as well. You know, you're going through it... ...I do believe you make your movie three times. And you get everything in and you put it together... ...as the script has laid out... ...and just sometimes, just pacing-wise... ...It doesn't work all together. This we flopped around quite a bit. Yeah. - And.... I think just to cut up... Remember we spent all the time in the forest. We never cut back to any of Viktor and all these things... ...and the conversation between Raze and Lucian... ...and then him gearing up. lt went straight from just him talking to Raze... ...and then the swords going in and it just felt awkward.

57:31 · jump to transcript →

It was a pain in the ass because it's literally sitting on my shoulder, sort of, and it's tied to my body very tightly, and I have to have my head kind of crooked to the side a little bit so that it's as centered as possible. And there's a monitor that's kind of swung out in front of me so that I can see what I'm shooting, but it was really uncomfortable. Well, that camera weighs like 25 pounds. That's my brother's video game. It's called Rhythm Destruction. The character, we wanted to imply that...

11:04 · jump to transcript →

But they were all miles too long and contradictory and again took us further and further away from Amy. And so we ended up being quite simple, really, and reducing it. Because actually Nick Szymanski had got married this weekend and we had footage of his wedding, that at one stage was in this sequence, of him making a speech on his wedding day, having just found out. So...

1:56:03 · jump to transcript →

Joss Whedon

So this is where the movie kind of unabashedly turns into Rio Bravo. Little bit of Zulu, Dawn of the Dead. It doesn't matter. If you've read the comic books, there are very famous panels by George Pérez of just a sea of Ultrons attacking the Avengers, and that, to me, was what I wanted to evoke. I also think that the work of Bryan Hitch, who did the Ultimates, which is really in many ways the father of the MCU, particularly the Avengers, that style of very muscular action, is going on here. But most importantly, what's going on here is not a sort of laid out, literal fight. The detail work in the backgrounds of shields and arrows, and the idea of all the teamwork and all of the things that are going on. What specifically is going on is much less important to me in this than the idea of this fight, than the feeling of it. Rather than set up specific stakes beyond "We must protect this" and "Here they all come," what I wanted to do was just show the feeling of an Avenger. It's the closest I feel like I've ever come to panel art and, to be specific, Thor there has ripped out someone's spine and head and is hitting other people with his head, which means that this movie is, at least on one level, awesome. I feel about the sequence that there are more missed opportunities, that I should have spent months more fine-tuning it, but I also feel that it is as beautiful as anything I've ever put on film. I feel this combination of despair and extraordinary elation when I watch it, I just want... Again, I want to make sure I've earned it, and I want to spend even more time watching Thor hit people with somebody's head. The rhythm of it was done very musically. That big hero theme is another piece by Danny Elfman, and among the most important, if not the most important, in the film. And it came in somewhat late in the process, but then Jeff Ford re-tweaked everything to fit its rhythm. Its rhythms were very close to what we had been using, but then, uh, we had to play to it.

1:55:05 · jump to transcript →

We did not have Bobby Digital for too long. He was only there for what, three days? -/ think four, including the rehearsal. Yeah, this is a lot of work to do, but, you know, he's done action before, many times. Directed it, starred in. Of course, you know, he knows... He's definitely seen more action movies than I have. Yeah. - Which is rare. It's hard to find. - Yeah.

1:18:06 · jump to transcript →

Tim Burton

that felt sort of right. So it wasn't just deadhead slight undulating quality to it. It's just so that there's a weird kind of a hypnotic rhythm to the whole thing. So it's like with costumes, sets, cinematography, we discussed all of this in terms of creating what it ultimately is. You are no more my king, but with the blessing of the angels of undying love.

1:05:14 · jump to transcript →

Nia DaCosta

Take it. Pick it up! Too slow, pal. We had to re-record dear Connor's dialog a couple of times because of his Glaswegian accent, which I, you know, understand just enough. But I think for the average American audience, they were a bit confused. Shit! It was really fun to do that stab. I really like special effects, especially when they have to do with, like, cuts or blood or gore, I think it's really fun. And so this is... And I wanted also much of the blood to be practical. I really hate VFX blood 'cause it looks so fake. And so in this scene, we have mostly real blood, but then VFX to either clean up or to match certain things. But everything we do is like a rig. So when you see the blood spraying out, it's always or almost always real... well, not real blood, but like real red fluid coming out of a pump. And then right off-screen, there's, like, SFX artists, like, pumping away at this can full of, you know, fake blood. Sir.

4:10 · jump to transcript →