Production design

This was the very last day of shooting on our movie. This was the last scene we shot. This is Alex James Phelps, and for fans of the Mission Impossible franchise, you'll get a kick out of the fact that his last name is James Phelps, a character in Mission Impossible 1 and, of course, in the TV series. He was cast a week before we shot it, and he came to work that day, the day before, actually, to walk the set.

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plant the seed of the oath here and it will it will pay off dramatically well it'll pay off very satisfyingly later on yes and it actually resonates why we do where we don't draw a circle around it it resonates through actions that characters take in this movie into the next movie um the set that they're on right now is a is actually the repurposed and rebuilt venice safe house set we've just taken out certain walls and if you look at some of the

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architectural elements in here. You can see the Venice safe houses in there. That's Gary Freeman. He's a brilliant, brilliant production designer. Great working on a budget. And when we said, hey, we need some sort of a safe house for Ethan, that's where we ended up. And yeah, Alex just got a fantastic face. And he tells you an entire story about some kid who's just beginning his life. Yeah.

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Tim Burton

Coming up with a character, then seeing them all come together on the set in real life, you know, it just gives it something we don't get every day. I'm investigating. Recognize this puss? Never seen that chick before in my life or after life.

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Tim Burton

I was respectful to what we did in the first one, but then expanding on it was important. I never, myself included, never wanna feel like I'm copying something or making something exactly the same. So that's why I didn't even watch the first movie before I did this one, because I didn't really know if it, it didn't feel like it was gonna help me. I just wanted to make this movie. So in terms of the set designs, I didn't go back and study everything and do this and do that. It's like the house was the house.

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Tim Burton

The only reason I wanted to make this Beetlejuice is because it felt personal. Working again with Michael and Catherine and Winona, I was shocked at how I felt on the set when I saw them together. You know, it was, like, quite emotional. It was like a weird family reunion. And I was surprised by those feelings, and I was surprised at how much fun... I mean, I don't usually say I have fun on a movie, and it's not... Movies aren't fun, but the energy... And again, I think...

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puzzled us, but then we got absolute complete rock solid confirmation the night before the first day of principal photography that there was a wall. And so the next morning called the production design team, said, you need to build a wall at the top of the stairs and it's just gonna have to be a real wall. And Taylor's gonna have to knock it down with a sledge just as you would with a real wall. And the whole thing was, that thing dried

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gandalf for those out there a nine line is essentially a kind of a list or a protocol of like how you call an aircraft it's got these like line items of critical information the pilot needs to to either drop ordinance or two that's just like i was just that's the standard i mean that's his that's what a jtech does so we were considerably far away from the house the set

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moments themselves that are true to their characters now whether that stops it being truthful or not i i don't know but but that's what that little sequence is about we're seeing what those guys have inhabited was that callous from uh training oh it's a great like little detail because every guy has one of those like from flipping safeties or fascinating yeah there's what i'm just gonna chuck in one thing here so it's said because it's about the production design because we're looking down the scope and we're seeing

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Edward Berger

I told him, I want to destroy the images. I don't want to beautify them. I don't want to sentimentalize. I don't want to make them pretty. I want to destroy it. And this is what he came up with. And the third was, find a sound. You know, this should be a sound that, you know, everything is there to, you know, whatever it is, costume, makeup, production design, camera, VFX, music.

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Edward Berger

So we try to, as you see here, we try to not show off the production design, the production value. We try to play a lot on this kid's face, his fear. Sometimes we have wide shots like here, but we try to stay on him as here. We're behind him, walking up a hill. Again, all in one shot here. Camera goes around.

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Edward Berger

And that breaks the period, that doesn't make it like a period movie with beautiful production design. Something that destroys it. And for me, that music was the perfect fit for that. See on Cut's uniform, these little details, he has a...

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Nicole is doing a kind of weaving called tablet weaving. All of the kind of trim on their clothes is this kind of fine weaving called tablet weaving. Craig Lathrop, the production designer, and his team created these beautiful murals in this room, which sadly you don't see them all that clearly, but they were quite beautiful to see. Watch this innocence tonight. He must be awoken to what awaits him.

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of the temple, and we're saying they sort of keep track of everything. And these wooden idols, I'm very pleased with, of the pantheon of Nordic gods and Odin on a large stone, which Neil Price, one of our historians, feels pretty confident it would not have been stone, but Craig, the production designer, wanted to have some different textures. But another one of our historians thought it would be fine, so there you go.

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Chris Lloyd with a shotgun. Chris was game, big-time, for this movie. He was just there for whatever you wanted to do. He was like, "Let's go." This is a very funny moment. Totally by accident, that thing was just there. Thank you, Roger Fires, production designer, for putting it there. - I think he was hinting. - Yeah? Because Roger also suggested... The ending that we had, I think, he didn't want to push. It was only when I went to hide there that David Leitch came up and said, "Hey, why don't you reach up and erase?" You know where David got it from? - Where? Rob, who was our dolly group. He was like, "That's a fun sign." I saw it in the morning, I'm like, "Kind of, maybe too cute." I was very cautious to not get too cute, but then Rob brought it up, David brought it up. At this point, everyone's reacting well. You'd be foolish not to embrace... If so many people are reacting to an idea, you gotta just take it, shoot it. You don't have to use it, but shoot it. - Yeah. And I'm glad that we did. I'm glad that Rob brought it up to public debate. Chris had a good time doing this. He's never done an action movie, and he's done every kind of movie. I don't think he's ever done one. Certainly not one where he... Wait. Blasting tens of people with shotguns. - Yeah. So he was game for it, big-time. Look at this guy. What a pro. What a great guy and what a pro. Super warm energy. Just... A very sweet man. And this is called Family Reunion, right here.

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I'm sure somebody will say it, and if they don't say it, I'm going to say it right now, and you can edit this out if Damien has final approval or not. But they shot this whole sequence, and we had a joke because all production would tell us was the location is Scott's dad's house. Scott was a gentleman who worked on the set and obviously knew Damien, and they were all friends going way back.

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Nia DaCosta

Yeah, developing this with the prosthetics was super fun. But the first time I saw... The first person they showed me was LA, who plays Jane Ji. And Gareth and Carson, who are the amazing production designer and costume designers, they also were super inside of, like, those sorts of looks, like anything that was full-body like that in terms of prosthetics, they were really inside of that process creatively. And they called me in to see LA in her skinned look, and LA was, like, had tears in her eyes and she was performing, basically. And I was like, "Oh, my God." It was so disturbing. I was like, "This is very distressing," and I'm looking at it and I know it's not real, but it just felt so real. And that's just like a testament to the amazing work that the prosthetics team, John Nolan and his team, do on this film. That's real. Well, not... Obviously, it's not his skin, but that's, like, prosthetics. That's all in-camera. With a little bit of help from VFX to clean up anything.

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