Practical effects

shots here where you see the shake that's also done in post-production the actors know that this is going to be done so you see them moving around a bit it allows steve to have more control over the way that it's done versus doing it in camera actors always feel totally ridiculous doing this stuff it's like pure star trek you know it's like shake and pretend we're pretend the room is shaking

14:25 · jump to transcript →

and you know this movie we just wanted the money had to take a huge leap forward thought island did a great job in the first movie but this movie had to be better and they really did it one of things it's so difficult about doing a shot like this is uh... when the shot was actually photographed uh... patricia who plays uh... milan on tsunami uh... had to perform that without anything there the other difficulty of course is that the camera operator has to operate the shot without emotive being there also so it's a

38:50 · jump to transcript →

This next shot coming up is pretty neat because it has in-camera speed changes, which you'll see come up here, and kind of puts us in their minds. It's very subjective. And if you listen to the soundtrack, you'll see that the sound design does the same thing. Very effective. I really pushed Leslie on that because if I did a shot like this again, I would have more movement in the background so you could really feel the slowdown and speed up.

1:09:42 · jump to transcript →

This village was built on the side of a really amazing area called Poolburn Lakes in New Zealand. And we built quite a few of the huts. Some of them are computer generated in the wide shot. But most of what you see here we did for real. It was this amazing little Scandinavian style village on the side of the lake. Now it wasn't actually raining on this shot, was it? No, this rain was added later. It was computer generated rain. We did use rain towers for the close-ups, but this is too big and wide to...

22:46 · jump to transcript →

I do love this scene. I mean, this was another favourite scene. I really did want to try to hang on to this stuff for the theatrical version. I love them talking about the Entwives. It's kind of just, you know, it's a shame. Anyway, it's here. Hey, we shouldn't mourn it too much. We have DVDs. Thank heavens for technology. But I am very happy with the way that the extended cut DVDs are now fleshing out the trilogy. This one was, I think, about 43 minutes longer than the theatrical version.

1:11:18 · jump to transcript →

ripped off, we made it rip off but then the flag blowing in the wind and going over the rooftops is done for real. It just happened. It was so windy that it did a perfect flight path for what we wanted for the shot. We had a helicopter rig to shoot from up at Ediris but it was so windy when we were there filming that we didn't get many good shots and the one that you're looking at here was actually shot while we were building the set because we had a helicopter with a camera fly nearby and I said to them why don't you just roll a bit of film to show me how the set's coming along

1:16:03 · jump to transcript →

You see the snow starting and either you have to shoot before it covers the floor because you lose the continuity, or either you want to shoot with the snow coming into frame because it's perfect. And it makes everybody work faster and with more energy. And that's what's great. It shoots for real outside. Well, I guess when they walk in the street, you have no choice. They have to be really outside.

13:11 · jump to transcript →

So here Jon Brion is playing all the theme that we will hear later with the piano and he's playing them like mixed up. It's like a remix but done directly on the piano. And we shift the light in camera to see. That was a big challenge for me to show the memory vanishing without using complicated special effect. There is just a ghost in front of the lens and we hit the ghost with the light.

21:58 · jump to transcript →

I asked him to hide for real and scare her. She didn't know where I would be. We did different takes on each time he would hide. Mark would hide in a different place.

26:27 · jump to transcript →

One of our actors voiced that black rider. I don't know if you know who it is, but it's actually Andy Serkis who also voices Gollum. We wanted to get a great voice. We were recording some Gollum dialogue and we said to Andy, do you want to try a black rider voice for us? And so Andy did it. Now this is a scene that I really did regret cutting out of the theatrical version and we did it only for momentum reasons because I just love it. I love the song. Fran actually wrote this song for the boys to sing.

34:38 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, she has a brilliant ear. She does. Very musical. All the translations were done by David Salem, an American scholar, all the Elvish, and in fact some of the other languages as well. This horse riding is all done for real. I mean, this shot here is amazing. I love the way the horse is pounding along. Shot down near Te Anau in New Zealand.

1:20:23 · jump to transcript →

That's right, Fran actually directed quite a significant piece of this scene. John Mahaffey did it too. Well, John really did it. John Mahaffey, our second unit director, directed quite a bit of this scene with Fran. I think you were there too, weren't you? I was there. There were rice flakes.

1:55:08 · jump to transcript →

Now, I really did like the way the set looks. That's cool. That's footage from the first movie. Like the names on the monitors, they're all names of people who worked on the crew. Len picked them. Notice that Nate Robinson, who did those shots, gave himself the absolute longest shot with his name on it. You'll see there's the one that's like... Well, I used to do that. I was a prop guy for quite a while, and so it was my job to...

18:45 · jump to transcript →

They've done such an amazing job on this one. No, they really did. Yeah, no kidding. So what is the writing there? It's Greek. You know, it's funny. On pages, people don't always think. You have to draw every page, basically. So you have graphic artists that really step in. And you can come up with a little concept, but those guys know how to write. That's what they do. We had people that just do handwriting, especially. Do they actually write a story?

54:41 · jump to transcript →

brave enough to set me up. So Macintosh did a really good job. It really did. You got too much to drink over there. I was very happy with Stephen's performance because I wanted him to, I wanted Tannis to have this combination of, you know, this confidence that...

1:00:16 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

I thought she should do something beautiful, but also very athletic and daring. And this is a very impressive routine that Lara does every night before she goes to bed, but Angelina actually had to learn to do for real. Now, I never expected her to do all this. When I cast her, I never thought of her as a stunt person, but during her training program before the shoot, she just learned how to do this thing from top to bottom, and I realized I wasn't going to have to use stunt doubles at all.

26:15 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

Every day, we would go in and do more and more damage to these sets. And as I said, they started off beautiful, pristine copies of real stately homes. And every day, we would go and put more bullet holes in them, more explosions, more broken glass. And we really did wreck them. So by the end of the shoot, they were pretty uninhabitable.

35:34 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

that was built to this kind of scale and this standard. It was just incredible. I also wanted to do everything for real as much as possible. So instead of doing a lot of green screen or blue screen work or computer generated stuff, almost everything in the film happens in front of the camera. So as well as this set being on a gigantic scale, it's also a mechanical set. You'll see later in the scene that, of course, the log gets released and flies across the...

46:17 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, they really did. I have to say, Nolte came on his game every day, and just that look to me in this scene that he has is just so great. It's just so sweaty and grizzled. The aviator glasses. Yeah, this is where Cody's dreams sort of get shattered.

38:07 · jump to transcript →

You look sad, dude. I'm feeling the pain. That's my turning point, is my character. Here's the compound. That's Nick Nolte for real in a helicopter. Crazy. Yeah. So here we are at the river.

41:41 · jump to transcript →

You know, this is when I just, I have to say that moment shooting Nick with that flamethrower. For real, it was a real flamethrower. Nick was blasting that thing. It was just a really enjoyable moment for me. Well, it was enjoyable for me to watch him do it on the day I remember I was there. But look where Ben's at right now. It's just as enjoyable to watch Ben watching the stuff that he loves. Ben was in the zone right here, though. What? You dudes don't know what duty is.

1:27:37 · jump to transcript →

I love that shot of Billy when he's thrown out. Yeah, well, that's a little in-camera cheat. That's really clever. We had Kieran, our scale double, being thrown out, and we had Billy lying on the floor already in position so he could just pop up at the right time. Actually, it was Fon. It was Fon that got... Another one of our scale doubles that actually got thrown out. She always did Pippin, didn't she? Yeah. Yeah, Fon played Pippin. So all of the shots of Pippin running around in the streets amongst the big people is usually Fon. Mm.

2:29:25 · jump to transcript →

And that's Sean really picking up Elijah, yeah? Yep, that's Sean and that's Elijah and they did it for real, yeah. Isn't that cool? Remember we sent that fax? We saw that we were back here and we'd seen the rushes and we sent the boys a fax and we made it look really formal, like it was a memo. On the next page we put, you made us cry. This is a very hybrid experience.

3:24:56 · jump to transcript →

They're doing this stuff for real to get themselves worked up into the emotion. And we looked at it the following day and most of the footage was out of focus. It was actually one of the most disastrous days shooting that we ever did, particularly because of what it was. It was like we could not believe it. It was out of focus, most of the footage. And we actually, I had to break the news to the guys. I remember walking on set and saying, you know that Greyhaven stuff? Yeah, yeah.

3:56:34 · jump to transcript →

James McTeigue

That speech, because it's such a muscular piece of writing... ... It needs to be attacked with great kind of gusto and flair. And passion and belief. And so, if that's all there, it's a wonderful introduction to the classic masked man. He just appears and you get that persona very, very clearly and very, very quickly. I would say there's not enough talking in films, nowadays. And, you know, there's not enough use of language. I think that introduction, you know, when he first turns up in the Fingerman Alley... ... throws the Shakespeare out to you, then you get the big alliteration speech. I think it's, like, it's nice to use words. And, you know, he uses them beautifully. I thought it was a cool way, also, to preserve from the graphic novel... ... how each chapter has a V word, which I love that. And I was like, I wish we could've kept that in the movie. But that sort of structure... ... 1S sort of condensed into that crazy use of V's in that speech. The important thing about that speech Is you're never gonna understand it. I mean, you know. But you're gonna understand the intent of it. The performance gives you the intent of what that speech Is. And then Natalie's reply is sort of, you know... ... you're the audience, you know, "Yes, what are you, a crazy person?" V does say that he's a humble vaudevillian veteran. He's an actor. I mean, he is an actor. The character is an actor. He's an actor activist. Or something. Who has been picked up and chucked inside... ...and then experimented on and tortured. Hugo's ability to use his physicality and his voice so expressively.... You're so intrigued by what's going on behind that mask... ...as an actor, as a character, as an audience member... ... that you're always going, okay, is he crying now? Is he happy? Is he angry? And because you're so, sort of, entwined in his emotions... ... you become V. And at the end, everyone is V. Because they've been trying to figure out his emotions... ... you know, everyone's trying to play him at the time... ...because they're trying to figure out what's going on under that mask... ...SO it's an amazing, sort of, engagement tool. And afterwards, you'll return home safely. All right. When you go up on the rooftop and you start hearing the music... ...I wanted you to be able to look out over London... ...and have some recognizable landmarks... ...even though it wasn't true to the direction that we were looking. We went up onto a rooftop nearby. We shot stills at night that we bracketed to get the full range of lighting information. Then we removed a few obvious buildings. The St. Paul's Cathedral stands out, there. It's very obvious. And just added a few extra skyscrapers and so on. Painted all the lights out for much lower levels... ...to sort of fit in with a late-night curfew. The Old Bailey Justice Courts itself is always a miniature... ... whenever we see it in this picture. And that's partly because the real building, if you go there at night is not properly lit... in any way that you'd, you know, really want to do it... ... If you were focusing on it like we were. We also made some slight design changes to the Old Bailey miniature. We changed the, flattened the, sort of dome roof, slightly... ...and enlarged the statue that's at the top... ...because she's quite an important part of the story, there. I still went with building miniatures for all of the intricacy and detail that you get... ... IN a very complex pyrotechnic explosion. To do that with a computer, although aspects of that are feasible now... ... the simulations are hugely complicated. And there are always these little happy accidents... ...and things that you get from doing something for real... ... that you're not... Not totally in your control. Which is a big reason why we do it. How beautiful, is it not?

6:41 · jump to transcript →

James McTeigue

Mmm. It's delicious. - Good. God, I haven't had real butter since I was a little girl. Where did you get it? A government supply train on its way to Chancellor Sutler. You stole this from Chancellor Sutler? - Yes. You're insane. I dare do all that may become a man. Who dares more is none. Macbeth. - Very good. My mum, she used to read all his plays to me... ...and ever since, I've always wanted to act. Be in plays, movies. When I was 9, I played Viola in Twelfth Night. Mum was very proud. Where is your mother now? She's dead. I'm sorry. Can I ask about what you said on the telly? Did you mean it? - Every word. You really think blowing up Parliament's going to make this country a better place? There's no certainty, only opportunity. You can be pretty certain that if anyone does show up... ...Creedy'll black-bag every one of them. People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people. And you'll make that happen by blowing up a building? The building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. Alone, a symbol is meaningless, but with enough people... ...blowing up a building can change the world. I wish I believed that was possible. Every time I've seen this world change, it's always been for the worse. Roger Allam, who plays Prothero, is a fantastic theater actor. Those shock jocks exist in every country... ...whether it's America or whether it's England... ...or whether it's Australia or wherever you are. I think the common denominator is they are in every country in some form. And he really embodied that. All the awfulness... ...and the disgustingness and the duplicity that a lot of those guys have. He's the voice of Britain, so he runs a television program... ...in which he rants his particular beliefs... ...which are also the beliefs of the government. I mean, very much like, I suppose... ...some of those evangelist kind of programs that you have in the States. Only his evangelism is a kind of nationalistic fascism, I Suppose. Roger really relished the role. I thought that he really did a good job. So, you know, I made him.... You know, he has those shirts that have the, like, the squeezing neck... ...and I put him, like, in a fat suit... ...and I made him a bit colorful and really made him over the top. One's initial impulse is to be quite big. Then you think, this is a movie. I better be smaller. And they were sort of also, "Oh, no, be big." You know, so. So, you know, you pick up influences... ...and direction and encouragement from wherever you can, really... ...and just sort of hope it all stitches together. Don't worry, I've made sure our reunion won't be disturbed by... ...any pesky late-night phone calls, commander. Stop. Why do you keep calling me that? That was your title, remember? When we first met, all those years ago. You wore a uniform in those days.

31:22 · jump to transcript →

James McTeigue

Oh, God. I hope I didn't wake you. No, I just thought you were fighting. I mean, for real. My favorite film: The Count of Monte Cristo, with Robert Donat as Edmond Dantes. It is not my sword, Mondego, but your past that disarmed you. It gets me every time. Never seen it. - Really? Would you like to? - Does it have a happy ending? As only celluloid can deliver. Okay. Put the sword away. Forensics just wrapped. No prints, no hair, no fibers. The guy is like a ghost. You won't believe what they found on Prothero. Drugs? - Could've started his own hospital. Interesting. - Why? Did you know Lewis Prothero was one of the richest men in the country... ...before he was the Voice of London? Drugs? - Legal ones. Major stockholder in Viadoxic Pharmaceutical. Viadoxic and St. Mary's in less than a week. Coincidence? When you're at this as long as I've been, you stop believing in coincidence. May we come up? You find your own tree. - You find your own tree.

36:08 · jump to transcript →

That was a little freaky, but then it became so much fun that I just wanted to keep doing it. Well, at least that part was fun. I think interacting with the banners was a lot less than fun. That was a really... That right there, that kind of free dive was something that I actually really did, and we shot that on a stage.

49:18 · jump to transcript →

It's interesting that we really did have a multinational cast. The hit squad, we hired them all out of Berlin. And...

53:53 · jump to transcript →

some more banner things to do. I think in this sequence, Hydraulx did a really terrific job. No, they really did.

1:23:19 · 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 know, it's all for real, right? So I had drunk, like, three bottles of water, and I couldn't take it anymore. I was going to pee my pants. So I was like, guys, get in there and pee. We ended up using fake pee sounds. Thanks for this position, by the way. It gives us all great abs. Yeah, John, thank you. The rotate. No one can hear you saying carpet burn. Because everybody's laughing at rotate. Oh, Jay got carpet burn, didn't he, on his bum? This...

38:16 · jump to transcript →

This is shot in our friend Michael Warner and Sean Bellman's apartment. They kindly gave us their apartment. Don't ever give your apartment to a film because you never know what they're gonna do in it. Or what they're gonna do on your piano. Yeah, and those are all their real books. Those guys are a couple eggheads for real. Brainstuds, we call them. They're brilliant. Brainstuds. They also have a salon every once in a while. They had one last Sunday. Brilliant performances.

43:54 · jump to transcript →

Tom Tykwer

And so the decision to stay inside the building for that explosion was more or less very logical and consequent. That's just for those people who wonder whether we changed that shot because of September 11th or whether we discussed the whole issue. We never really did because we also never felt that this film was a film that in any way discusses

11:36 · jump to transcript →

Tom Tykwer

Of course, you know that the actress will say, are you sure? And you might have some discussions about it because, of course, cutting off your hair, you can't really fake it. If you want to show it, you have to do it for real. And luckily enough, Cate is not an actress that even discusses these kind of things. She knew when she had read the script that we had to do it and we had to do it for real.

1:12:17 · jump to transcript →

I think you've changed the cut since I saw this. 'Cause it all used to play in the wide shot. No, it does jerk around. - Did it always? This is one of those things that makes me think you actors are very good. No, it's just the way that you actually have to do it. You've got... We were 40 people around you in a room, and guys with microphones and everything like that, and then suddenly, you've actually got to do something for real. Bill, can you cry? -/ can if you give me... A day? - A day in the corner thinking bad thoughts. Thomas? - Me? Can you cry to order? Cry now. I'm not sure. - Stop. For God's sake. Here, there's a hanky. But she does it so... She's completely brilliant. It's not just that she cries, it's the way she cries. Yeah, but she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown as a human being. That's true. You can't bear it, can you? There we go. That stuff. Well, there we go.

1:29:40 · jump to transcript →

Well, Bill... It was a weird day, this, wasn't it, Bill? We were in some strange flat in Maida Vale or something like that. This wasn't a set, this really did feel like where a manager would end up. It was a very witty set, like a shrine.

1:40:23 · jump to transcript →

lt was so-- It was the most fun I think I've ever had... ...making a movie. Everybody was so great. But it's not a film set I would be dying to be naked on. No. - For so many reasons. What do you mean by that? - It was freezing. But I don't know. I would have felt really funny about it. What film would you feel comfortable about being naked on? You know, more comfortable. There was something giddy about the whole thing. You felt like people would have just laughed at your ass or something. All right. - You know? Sophia was... - Horrified. Quite horrified. - She was? Yeah. - Did she have--? Was covered--? Yeah, it was covered, and... - That's good. Which makes it difficult. - This was so hard for me. This was hard. This was difficult. He was showing me some outtakes, the number of times... ... you and I were cracking up. You can't make me kiss him in the second one, or I won't get through. Every kiss, there's about 12 takes of you guys laughing. I had so much fun with you, I must say. I really did. We had fun. - I had so much fun. I would have more fun if I wasn't looking at my watch. It's got to be tough. But we did laugh a lot. We were laughing. We were laughing. There's something, when you had the gun... ...and you would do that Charlie's Angels stunt. My God, I still laugh about that. That's me trying not to laugh right there. Well, in the outtakes, that's what you're... Yeah. - We had it tough here, a tough time. You kept getting "silver round" and "single round"-- Now, what did I say? What'd he say? - What'd he say?

1:05:04 · jump to transcript →

God, this day.... Again, it was.... You guys were just cracking up the whole day. We had to actually look full in the face and kiss each other. This kiss is actually taken out of the original. Oh, yeah, that's right. And you put It back in. Michael does not look happy about that. It's quite a long kiss there. - Yeah. What's going on? - Don't you remember, you and I? Remember, we were just like, "Why is he leaving us here?" Why am I leaving you? I was behind the camera going, "Excuse me." Most directors will shout "Cut" when they're done. I was yelling "Cut" and doing the clap. - You were not. You just had the drool coming out of one side of your mouth. A lot of wandering about that was cut. Again, this isn't a director's cut, this is an extended cut. And a lot of the stuff, you can see why it was taken out. It was just like things like this. lt wasn't necessary at the end of the day. Essentially, a director's cut, the difference... An extended cut is basically a longer movie that the director says: "This has got nothing to do with me." Yes. I mean, there's stuff in here that I wanted to see back in... . like Scott's back-story and Singe's original reveal. But a lot of the stuff, I was glad to see it go. That's my favourite shot of a werewolf... ...that low-angle roar. I thought he looked the most like a real animal. Good old Bill. I mean, he really did so much of that stuff himself. Oh, yeah. That's like, when he stabs with the sword here... ...this look that he's got with the baring the fangs. No, when he was doing all the fighting... ... he'd never even done a stage fight in his life. And he was in that water for hours at the end. Oh, yeah. And he's, you know, going up against, you know, Scott. Scott and the stunt guys, and.... No, he hung in there. We just beat the shit out of him too. It was really.... He was just exhausted and was... Freezing in that water too. - Yeah, it was. But he never, you know, put his hands up and said: "It's just, you Know, it's too much." Everybody was pretty good like that. - Oh, they were all-- They were great.

1:50:35 · jump to transcript →

This, by the way, we did not build, we did not dress. I mean, we put some clothes in. There's a little bit we did, but when we showed up, we showed up in winter to scout this location and the trees were all barren and there was dirt and stuff everywhere. Basically looked exactly like this and we said, "This is absolutely perfect." I do think Allan added some of the garbage and some of the cool graffiti. - Yeah, garbage, trees and stuff. But what's funny is our location people didn't quite understand what we were going for, and at one point they cleaned the whole place up. It was like, "No, no, no." They told us, "It's clean." We said, "No, put it back." So they had to spend the money to put all the dirt back. Also, the trees were growing leaves and we had to kill the trees. We basically paid some sort of fee to the government to kill the trees. The dog with the hand we should throw in there. Yeah, that's a highfalutin allusion to Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. For those of you who have seen Yojimbo and this movie, all six of you. And there was also another shot that showed the desolation of Eastern Europe. As they're walking, they see the dog. They see the guy bathing. - Horrified. And there was a girl, a little girl who they smile at and wave to who then basically cops a squat and starts peeing, which is in the end credits of the movie, as sort of a little joke, and basically people were just sort of... I don't know. It's one of these things where in the movie... You love it or you hate it. - Yeah. We love it. And apparently more powerful people than us hated it. We wanted it to be in the body of the movie, especially in this unrated cut, and it is not. And I guess we'll just leave it there. I guess we should mention, also, Tibor who you just saw. - Yeah, Rade Šerbedžija. All of our casting in this movie is based on the works of Guy Ritchie, so having cast Vinnie and then needing someone to play Tibor... By the way, that money, $1.83, we actually didn't have... We forgot. - ...61.83 in American money on the day. We had to scrounge up... It ended up being $1.46. I think I had a quarter in my backpack. Just what people had. We didn't have the money. We'd been in Prague for so long. - This, I think, was our second day. Yeah. - No, this was our first day. We shot the train station in the morning. - This was day one. Or at least bits and pieces of it. - And this... This was actually the first thing we ever, ever shot, which we've now added back. - Yeah. Originally, when they're on the side of the road and Michelle is trying to get the cars to stop, Scott mentions that you can't... No one's pulling over 'cause she's showing her bra. - He says, "This is Europe. They have orange juice ads with lesbians and dildos. You gotta give them something they haven't seen before." Then later in Eastern Europe... You see the orange juice ad with lesbians and dildos. And in the theatrical version, we actually cut the orange juice ad completely because it just felt like the joke of the opulent hotel was better if it was just shorter. So we got to this stuff quicker. The guy who just ran out, the waiter, is like... Dustin Hoffman. - ...Jim Carrey. Miroslav Táborský. - He's like the Jim Carrey of Prague, and he's really funny. I'm not sure he ever... He never trusted us. No. We had to explain. He didn't want to slap with the backhand and we had to explain that in America... - We had to lie to him... "In America, it's called a bitch slap, the most degrading thing you can do." - We made up this crazy excuse to get him to do what we wanted to do. He just didn't trust us. Nothing you can do about that. That was something we wanted designed, which was the keyboard in the radioactive box played with gloves. Didn't quite work. - No, I'm not sure anyone cares. But we know it's there. This was a factory... It's a high-voltage testing facility. It's a real, working, high-voltage testing facility. And they have it in the movie XXX, but we shot it very differently. And David really went all out here. I mean, especially those sort of finger lights that you see, he put into the background of every shot and Allan gave a lot of neon. And this is some of the best-looking stuff in the entire film. Michelle does look beautiful. - Michelle looks incredible. Of course, the only problem is this place has a horrible, cavernous echo, and there are things in here we just had to sort of loop. We had no choice. The stuff in that bottle, by the way, is so toxic... Poisonous chemical. ...that when they were dancing with the bottles later and two bottles met and broke, they literally had to clear the floor, scrub it down, decontaminate before we could go again. Anyway, our actors are hovering over the fumes right now. It's fine. Again, look at the lights in the back of all this. That big piece of equipment, that's really there. Michelle's close-up here... That is such a gorgeous shot. - That's incredible. That stupid VIP sign behind him was awful. That was there for all day and we never saw it until too late. Well, you can't, you know... You look at a tiny monitor on the set and you can't see everything that the camera picks up. And then you get in the editing room, you go, "Oh, my God, you can see all that stuff." But also, I don't know if it was us being first-time directors or what. On any given day, there are two or three things you're really obsessing on because you feel that those are the most important things, and you solve those only to realize later that there was one minor thing, like that stupid VIP sign, and there's one of those in every scene where you just go, "What was I thinking?" - Sometimes you're obsessing on something that ultimately turns out to be insanely unimportant, and the massively important thing is sitting right in front of you and you screw it up. - In that scene, we were obsessing on a line when they were flirting. That we ended up just cutting. Yeah, he said he was the black sheep of the family and then she was trying to be witty and she was sort of saying, "That's okay. I have an uncle who 'blank. And we must have done take after take after take. "You think you're the black sheep of the family. My aunt's a female bodybuilder." Just take after take after take of stuff, nothing that was ever used, and it makes the VIP sign all the more, sort of, laughing at us. By the way, the Green Fairy is played by Steve Hytner... So great. - ...who played Bania on Seinfeld. We worked with him also. - A real good friend too. He really did us a huge favor. - Yeah. He was going to a wedding in Italy, I think, and he stopped into Prague on his way to... Here's a little added extra. Yeah, this was just a little something we cooked up. Jacob was really funny doing this. In the theatrical version, we cut it. There's no time for this in the theatrical version, but we felt we'd subject you to it. And he just... He got it, you know, that he was... Again, we're into the production at this point, and his Cooper had become a character. - He was dialed in. Exactly. And here we go. - On the day this happened, Travis comes up to me and says, "I have a cold." I say, "You're not going to tell Michelle you have a cold because your tongue is going to be down her throat." Also on that day, Michelle's mother, sister, and sister's boyfriend... Decided to show up. - ...came to visit. And it was just like, "Oh, God." But ultimately, they went for it. They went for it, and it's all about the tongue. Yeah.

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That's a little clip from the Summer at Sea. Trying to look at any other cast people and things we should be mentioning. I guess... - The prop guys, by the way. Just Lukas and Michal. Good guys. Really good guys. Lots of the stuff that you're seeing here you can see in their entirety in the... Including probably a little more of that. We were one of the few movies that have ever gone in and used a lot of key Czech people as heads of big departments. Usually... We did have some guys shadowing guys that we brought in, but we really did try and use a lot of Czech crew. And I think we were rewarded for it. - They were awesome. I think it was a really good set. People seemed to go out of their way to tell us that. Anyway, so that's the movie. It was, hopefully, as fun for you guys to watch and hear about as it was for us to make it. Very odd for us to watch it. - Yeah. Hopefully, it was less odd for you. It was Maurice Chevalier, not Charles Aznavour. Oh, God. Jesus. James Venable. Yes. Our composer. And, by the way, there'll be... If you're watching the unrated DVD, there's another commentary you can enjoy, and also secretly buried on the DVD elsewhere is us doing three separate commentaries where we talk about each other. But James Venable is the composer. He's done stuff for Kevin Smith. I worked with him on the Clerks animated show, and he kicked ass. There was just-- Creepy Italian Guy's theme, a couple of the other pieces were... I love the music. He was a real pleasure. It's like the end of the Oscars. I know, I know. It's like, "Who did we forget?" Everybody was great. Everyone was great, except the guy who did coke and tried to steal that we had to fire. - But he was still good. And here's our favorite thing. That's why we made the movie. A little reward for those of you who sit in your seats. Good night, everybody. - Goodbye. Bye.

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Andrew Niccol

a more natural look. Some of these shots that you see, like this one, are done in camera, where the people in the plane are in the same shot. And others like these are composited together.

1:10:55 · jump to transcript →

Andrew Niccol

The arms dealer I rented the plane from probably wouldn't be too happy if I took it apart for real. Once again, it was done by Yann Blondel from L'E.S.T. in France. Ironically, this plane crashed a month later in Uganda, carrying what was described as a suspicious cargo, and all the crew were killed. Not the same crew who flew the plane

1:17:22 · jump to transcript →

Matt's voice was used for a majority of the shots, and he just used to do the Predator mimicking kind of as a joke, and then we were like, wait a minute, God, you're really good. Maybe we should actually try you out for real, and we sent him over to where the guys were recording all the voices, and he auditioned for it and actually ended up getting the role. It was definitely the best. Great party trick, huh? Hey, I'm the Predator. I'm going to do the Predator. Yeah, definitely...

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This is our much more intense version of Jesse getting pinned to the wall. We actually redid this in visual effects with her splitting in half and her guts dripping out. But yeah, that was her stunt double for her, and that was real-time, in-camera, actually hit the wall. I thought she snapped her neck when we did that first stunt. We probably did it four takes. I could not believe how hard that stunt woman was great.

1:21:55 · jump to transcript →

he will actually lose the prosthetics and go for the real thing. In fact, in that film, we even see an oral sex done for real and the use of actual pornographic performers, both in male and female roles, something that we still don't have here. But you definitely feel that maybe Brass, and this is, I'm thinking out loud here, maybe Brass...

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She did it for real. She was very nervous. Oh, that shot, that's not a reverse shot? No. Usually you reverse. You pull the sword away. Swing as hard as she can and pause. Jeez. I didn't know that. I actually didn't. She was very nervous. Yeah, well, she'd been a character. I don't mean Zhang Ziyi, I mean Michelle. Yeah. I'm sure Zhang Ziyi was nervous too.

1:51:25 · jump to transcript →

Ron Howard

as really the point of view character and the ultimate kind of hero of the movie in a lot of ways, was something that gave me a great deal of satisfaction. And Taylor really did a great job with it.

1:20:21 · jump to transcript →

and yeah as as the score and the gunfire are coming together yeah and by the way that dirt it had rained the night before and that dirt was as hard as cement and watch how many times i mean watch how hard ryan goes down plops down and how many times he had to do it yeah he just took so many face plants wow ryan really did a great job and he did so completely committed himself

1:50:16 · jump to transcript →

And Anthony's kind of following this cab in another cab. And Andrew's up on a crane, I think, getting a wide shot. So you can give... This is actually picked up later. We did this somewhere else later. But it does affect the actors to see something for real rather than just paint it all out afterwards. You do see it affect them. It helps them enter the world of it. This was very tricky, this, because how do you show it?

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Barry Sonnenfeld

These elevators really did work.

1:05:43 · jump to transcript →

Noah Baumbach

This is his ship, the Belafonte. We bought this ship in South Africa and sailed it up to the Mediterranean and renovated it and made it into this research vessel. It never ran that well, but we really did fall in love with this ship. The crew of the film was always very sort of loyal to it. Now, we have Michael Gambon, who plays Oseary Drakoulias, the producer, a sort of Carlo Ponti, Dino De Laurentiis-style mogul, although he does produce these documentaries. He has the longest fingers that I think I've ever seen in real life. He understands. Amin needs to make a projection of the world grosses to see if he can get a tax break and run it through his output deal. I think that Zissou sees himself and wants to be the kind of person who gives kids secret messages in the cereal boxes. Right. That's an inspiration for him. And the movie is about this, theoretically, a real person, but he's inspired by a sort of fantasy version of himself. And there's things sort of peppered throughout the movie, but this whole red caps and the uniforms and the whole thing. And Owen, in some ways, is our stand-in, I mean, of the child who looks up to this person. And I think another layer of that that we were always dealing with was how our cinematic idols in some ways were like surrogate fathers for us. Movies we loved that sort of took the role of things we looked up to, things we sort of wanted to live vicariously through. And I think Owen and Ned's character sort of stands in for that. This is a kind of an unusual role for Owen Wilson, I think. Right. He has a sort of recognizable comic persona that he's developed. And this is, I think, very different from that. I think when we were writing it, we often talked about that even though Ned was, as written, very naïve and kind of an innocent, I think there's always a kind of somewhat devilish nature to Owen. You can see the light is on behind his eyes all the time. There's some Zissou in him. Yeah, that's interesting. And I think also it made us feel more comfortable writing such a naïve character because I think if it was played too much that way, it would kind of wash out. Yes, and I think Owen's concern was, he was like, "What am I gonna do?" Because he felt like the character is so innocent and so sincere that he's not used to playing someone who's that sincere. He usually plays somebody who's a little bit wily on some level, or something like that anyway. And I think for him, when he really became comfortable with it was because we were sitting on the roof of this hotel in Rome, and he told me this funny story about Will Patton on the set of Armageddon, and he did Will Patton's voice, this southern accent. And I asked him, "Do you think you could do this whole movie in that voice?" And what he ended up doing-- He liked it. We read through the whole script reading all his lines with that, and it was funny and it gave him a sort of genteel feeling and something a little bit not quite real. And the accent's certainly not real. The accent hasn't existed certainly since the Civil War. Right. - Even if then.

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