Shooting schedule

Gary Goddard

how we had to move the camera to tell the story in very condensed time. Even though this is one of the first shots in the movie, these were some of the last shots that we actually put on film. The schedule was very, very tight. We had to move very quickly. We had to consolidate our storytelling and try and get as much information in as few shots as possible, especially in some of these things here. I particularly like this effect that we're...

4:18 · jump to transcript →

Gary Goddard

the tail end of the schedule, we didn't get everything we wanted, but we did get a lot of use out of it, not as much as I'd wanted, but that's why you see so many levels there. They were designed for what the final battle would be. The eye in the back also, that was a last add in the original script that David O'Dell wrote. There really wasn't a ticking clock. I felt a need to put a ticking clock on this, and we came up with this kind of eye, this door on the universe. The eye opens on the universe. They're coming. Get back there. Keep working.

12:27 · jump to transcript →

Gary Goddard

I forgot all about it now till I'm watching it again. This was the second week of shooting. The first four days, five days were out there in the woods and also at the interiors of Courtney's house, which we'll see later. And this was the second week where we went to Robbie's and shot this. The reason we did these shots first is we were on a very fast pre-production schedule and they were literally building the sets

22:43 · jump to transcript →

This sequence probably took it. I seem to remember it taking like three weeks. I can tell you. Oh, you have the shooting schedule right here. I can't believe it. I pulled this out of a box. I said I didn't even know I owned it. All right. Carnival. Homecoming Carnival. We shot it fairly early while they were building sets. I remember it wasn't that long into the. Yeah.

58:33 · jump to transcript →

It's just like, oh, God, have we got it yet? Well, you know, how long was the shoot? Days, let's just say, 66 days or something? No. It wasn't that long, 40? No. 36 days? March 10th. 36 days. January 28th to March 10th. The choir singing We Are The Champions.

1:26:00 · jump to transcript →

and give them time, give them air, give them space to be able to develop the script so that it is production ready. I'd spend my mornings, most of the shoot days, looking at Clive's script, looking at James' script and trying to put as much of Clive's lines and character motivations as I could.

42:41 · jump to transcript →

on a small budget and a fast shooting schedule. So you've really sort of set the bar high for what you're trying to achieve in such a short space of time. Well, it was budgeted by Graham Ford, who had just come off Brazil, as the line producer on Brazil. And Graham did a budget, and it was way, way over a million. And the producer said, well, we can't go ahead.

53:47 · jump to transcript →

Paul Davis

And there was another moment that was supposed to go on to the end of that, that they didn't actually end up shooting, but it was in the script and it was on the schedule and it was tailed on to be at the very end of the transformation sequence. Another demon was actually going to be standing in the corner with the submachine gun and just completely blow David to pieces.

32:56 · jump to transcript →

The MCP and its choreography, I think, was really, mostly, the work of Bill Dungan and Larry Malone. Mal McMillan and Art Durinski also contributed a lot to this whole sequence, but the software, the original software that was written by Triple-/ to create these sequences was one of a kind. And at that particular point in time, with the production schedule that Tron had and the massive amounts of CGI that had to be created, it was a major achievement by Triple-I and that group of people to meet the deadline and to make this particular picture come together.

1:26:20 · jump to transcript →

Tim Lucas

He asked one of the makeup people, it may have been Shonagh Jabour, a very quiet, shy, delicate little woman who drifted around in ballet slippers, to make up his fingers to look like they had severe frostbite and put the flesh gun back on. And then he complained to his director. Cronenberg looked at his discolored fingers with some genuine concern, but I imagine he asked if he felt up to finishing the shot. Anyway, Jimmy didn't let the joke detract unduly from the schedule, and the laugh re-energized everyone on set.

1:11:20 · jump to transcript →

Bill Paxton

Because 7he Terminator hadn't come out yet, there was the perception that Jim was somehow not up to the creative responsibility of directing a sequel to Ridley Scott's masterpiece. There was a lot of resentment, and really no understanding, or very little, of what he was trying to accomplish. We had people who were, I think, completely on our side - John Richardson in practical special effects, Brian Johnson in visual effects. There were people who understood Jim's vision, but there were quite a few people who simply looked at him as the know-nothing, upstart Yank, which drove Jim crazy, considering he's a Canadian. It was his right hand, his AD. The leader of the rebellion, the first assistant director, not only behind Jim's back but to his face would call him "Guv'nor" and roll his eyes, as if Jim hadn't earned the title yet. We were shooting very long hours and people were pretty frazzled, and by our standards in America at the time a 12-hour day is not a long day, it's average, but 12 hours at the time in England was a very long day, and there were times when we'd go into a 14-hour day. At a certain point our assistant director, basically, said: "We're not doing this any more." So we fired him. And he felt that he really should be directing the movie. He was a frustrated director. He had directed second unit before. I think he even had directed a small film. But he really felt that he was better qualified than Jim was to direct the film. He went to all the departments and some cast members and everyone walked off the set. It was the most difficult moment of my entire career, even to this day, trying to rally everyone back. In fact, we were able to turn it around so that the outcome of that mutiny was that we were united, after we resolved the issues, for the first time on the film and going onto the rest of the production schedule. We actually were a unified group. So it was an example of something good coming out of a really difficult situation. I remember talking to people and going "This is a wonderful movie." "Everybody's working as hard as they possibly can." And hoping that no one would lose the energy. Fortunately, because of how you handled it, it all came together. Because it was scary. It was very scary. We were at that point - what are we gonna do, hire a new crew? Not that the thought didn't cross my mind, but England was very busy. We didn't have the option. There weren't other key crew members even available. When you have no options, you make it work, and we did. This is probably my favorite movie of my career, and the only movie where I've experienced anything like what we went through. I will also say, on the positive side, of the English crew... I brought a handful of guys from the States. We started all our designs and our builds in the States and then built a workshop in Pinewood and hired all but a half a dozen of the key coordinators from my studio from England. And everybody worked very hard and did a great job. They were wonderful artists and committed and everybody wanted to do a good job. They just had slightly different work habits than we did. I was shocked when suddenly, at a particular time mid-morning, everybody would be gone. I'd go "Where is everybody?" They'd go "They're at tea." I said "Hello?" Just gone. The other thing is that Pinewood Studios at the time had an entire crew on staff that were assigned to a movie. Right now it's four-wall, which means you hire the crew you want, it's freelance. But you ended up with the crew that was assigned to the stages you were working on and there was no selection process involved. It made it really difficult because some people really were punching a clock. They didn't want overtime, didn't wanna do anything other than work an eight-hour day. Shooting this film in England wasn't just a culture clash. For me, it was also a transition from a non-union guerilla-filmmaking mentality, which started at Roger Corman's New World Pictures and continued on 7he Terminator, which had a non-union crew, to a union picture. And also the particular way that they work in England was very, very different, and so there was an adaptation to that. And, frankly, I thought there were a lot of people on the crew that were, to use a charitable term, comfortable, and that was completely foreign to me. I'd been used to working with young, eager, hard-core, dedicated film folks. They all had something to prove. But a lot of the people especially at the Pinewood Studios at that time were lifers. They had permanent employment. It didn't matter what movie they were working on. And they got pushed on us. If you did Pinewood, you had to use their people. It was a whole different mentality. So I pushed against that as hard as I could. If I hadn't, we wouldn't have got the film done on budget and on schedule, which we did. I know probably a lot of people there at Pinewood at the time didn't care for us, with our guerilla-filmmaking ways and styles - we were not polite. By the end there were a number of them that came to respect the fact at least that we knew what we were doing, which I guess is OK.

1:30:33 · jump to transcript →

Oliver Stone

Towards the end of the schedule, we're running out of time. Shit. In struggling to deal with how do we light this huge battle at night with a limited amount of time and money, we didn't have the money for the lighting, certainly,

1:37:15 · jump to transcript →

Is that the refinery back there? Yeah, that's the refinery. And this set is the value of someone like Jan Kiesser, the DP, because we didn't know where to shoot it, and he just created and kind of manufactured this setting. I remember he spotted the car there and we dressed the back with the hubcaps and kind of created it instantaneously that day because we were stuck. We had lost... We didn't lose the location, but we changed the schedule, and we had to shoot this scene, and... Anyway, not that important. But again, I'm remembering stuff as I'm seeing it, and... The light's beautiful.

22:58 · jump to transcript →

You know, I hear it too, and it's very annoying. I wish you'd find the hooligan that's responsible because I am trying to read chapter seven again. I remember we shot this later in the production schedule after all these people had had a chance to be with each other for a while. It's important in a scene like this. It's huge. They were.

1:12:26 · jump to transcript →

Barry Levinson

you know, the journey that they took in the past week, and that now Charlie's sort of got the schedule down, that on a certain day it's pancakes, et cetera. So therefore he takes them to the pancake house, or a pancake house, I should say, and he knows the ritual.

1:56:25 · jump to transcript →