Shooting schedule

So this water stuff was supposed to take, max, how long? Cos they had it slotted for - what was it? A week? Was it a week and a half? And then it ended up taking twice or three times that long. I think it was two weeks on the schedule. For me this is what the movie was all about - the water. We met before the movie in swimming pools and learned how to underwater... how to use a hookah and how to scuba. It seemed like eternity when we were doing this, like we'd never get out of it. It seemed like we were doing it forever. This was actually the first thing we shot after we shot all of the underwater stuff. So this was the last underwater stuff that we shot. Yeah, this was the last of it, was setting up the sequence that took two and a half, three weeks to shoot.

1:08:18 · jump to transcript →

It wasn't easy to find a good ending. The first one from Joss Whedon was very expensive, on Earth. I know the studio wanted to finish on Earth. It was the first idea. I know the studio wanted to finish on Earth. It was the first idea. But I knew from the beginning it won't happen because it's too expensive. I preferred from the beginning to finish on the spaceship. I know it was a little bit too close to the second one and the first one too. I think it was more clean to finish like this, more than to have an ending, very cheap, on Earth. And, at the end, I prefer this ending. But we wrote maybe four or five different endings and... I had a crazy idea with a car crash but with spaceships. It was pretty funny but, one more time, too expensive. Dominique, I remember I didn't tell you "Ron Perlman is going to kiss you." It was a surprise. - Yeah, it was quite a big surprise. My love story with Ron is ending. Very good. It was meant to have another ending. When we really started preproduction, the ending was on Earth. Jean-Pierre was not happy with the ending so there were several options and at the end Jean-Pierre shot a studio version with the two girls on the earth after landing. Initially the Betty was to crashland on Earth. Because the whole idea was to actually move the whole Alien myth down to a new level and leave a door open, which was Earth. Which you sort of get at the end of this one, but it's still very ambiguous. But in that initial script, it wasn't. The whole idea was that you've now landed on Earth by the end, the last page, and you sort of know where the next film is gonna take you. And the green-screen shot was actually the last bit of shooting from, you know, the sort of main production schedule. And it was Ripley and Call crashlanding. And they come out, and they just sit there. And in the distance is a city. And they come out, and they just sit there. And in the distance is a city. And they haven't gone to it yet, and this is all about Call, has never seen the Earth because she's a robot. The studio, Fox, was really keenly amused with the idea that Jean-Pierre was French and that all of his sort of French-ness could be tapped into. And one of the ideas, for instance, they had at Fox was, why not crashland the Betty somewhere near dunes or something where all you see is part of the Eiffel Tower rising out of the sand? I can tell you something to finish. For the French crew it was an amazing adventure, and it was the best year of my life. It was SO... We lived... We were living during one year. It was... a special... a very... It was an incredible challenge? Incredible challenge. And we did it. It was good.

1:47:44 · jump to transcript →

nice golden time of day. Yeah, I think the shooting schedule allowed for everyone had to be extremely focused, but there was time to get it right. And if a setup meant bringing a crane in, knowing the shot's going to begin static and rise, huge things like that opened the film up. Yes, and that was one of the things, because it does end up getting dark and we stay at night, and I always said I want to open it up and I want to keep it bright in the beginning and not be claustrophobic. But...

30:15 · jump to transcript →

early, early Forrest stuff, like, you know, running up and down the oak alley of the house and that sort of thing. So we were very blessed in how we scheduled the movie for the character to, for Tom to really get immersed in the character. And then when we finally got to the bench in Savannah, which was actually a little more than halfway through the schedule,

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This was the Sherry Lansing era of Paramount. And for a board of directors meeting, she brought Amy in, not saying that it wasn't a real gorilla at first. And so they're very, very proud of Amy. She's a big innovation. We'll get to how they did that a little bit later. This was an 83-day shooting schedule, which...

2:04 · jump to transcript →