Structure

That's George, my regular driver. Where is he? He's gone home sick. Touched the flu. Building up and running yet? That's not exactly it. Sorry, but this is a bio-site facility, a storage structure. I'll have it up in a minute. Okay, take a look at this. Start from the inside out.

1:05:01 · jump to transcript →

This entire third act of this movie was just not only hair-raising to shoot, very complex and difficult. I was going to say painful. It wasn't actually painful. It was just very difficult. But what was scary about it in post-production is that all the special effects didn't come in. They were all on schedule, but they didn't come in until literally six weeks before the movie opened, a lot of it. And so we were really holding our breath and going on faith.

1:53:25 · jump to transcript →

But we were able to film almost sequentially. Those moments accepted where we had to go back for occasional things. Basically everything was done in sequence, which is very unusual for a film. And I think it's because of the nature of the story that we were able to structure it like that. Schedule it like that. Bob, our production manager, and Richard Stiles, our first, kind of scheduled it like that so that it gave the actors the opportunity. It's great for actors. Ken Loach does that...

37:27 · jump to transcript →

Ted Tally

So that sequence, those two minutes of the movie, which could have been a very boring, dull sequence. I had a long conversation with Kristi Zea. It was wonderful. She called me up and said, "This book of Dolarhyde's. "What does it look like? What's in it? "How is the handwriting? What kind of photograph?" We had a long conversation which for a screenwriter... You don't often get a call from the production designer to talk about a prop. It was a wonderful opportunity to be part of the design of the movie in that little section. You've got a beautiful setup here, Will. This was actually in the Florida Keys. You know why I'm here? Was it Marathon? Yeah, I can guess. The location is meant to be Marathon, Florida. Dino wanted us to shoot in North Carolina because he had studios there and a house on the beach or Malibu because it's close to his house in Beverly Hills. But the truth is, I wanted to stay true. When I said I chose the tone, I'd really chosen the tone of the book, going back to the book. Everybody here was honoring the book. We really gave a lot of respect to Thomas' book. Tom Harris is a wonderful writer. When you're doing an adaptation like this, it's a great resource to everybody to be able to pick up the book, as you can go into more details than the screenplay. It's a help to both the production design and the actors, who can go back and find out details of motivation. It's helpful to everybody to have that bible to refer to. So when it said Marathon, Florida, I tried to stay true to that and actually go to the location in Marathon, Florida. It just felt like it was the tone and even the location, like Grandma's house in the same description of the rural area where it was, and the type of house it was. It was an old-age home once, which is really back-story, but Kristi incorporated that into the design. I was so happy that she and Ted really stayed true to the tone of the book visually as well when it described the locations. This was so much fun being down here, by the way. It was the end of the shoot, and we were just down there on the beach. This was probably the hardest scene I shot with these two guys. In what way? Because it's exposition? Anything with exposition... -/s tough. It's tough to make it sound like real conversation. But honestly, there's not a line in this movie that I'm not proud of. I mean I can't say there's a line... It was a tight script. We did cut a few lines and a few parts from scenes but Brett and I actually worked quite a bit on the script before the production started, and we had it pretty tight. And the shooting stayed quite faithful to the script. I have to say that every scene was hard for me because I'm used to scenes with not much dialogue. I, unfortunately, am a very talky screenwriter. So it was a clash of cultures. Coming from being a playwright, I guess. There is a lot of dialogue in this movie, I tell you. And it was not a single-spaced script. It's a long script, and I kept saying, "Make them talk faster. "Don't cut the thing, just make them talk faster." Ted's advice to me was, "Brett, when you're happy, "ask the actors for a take where they talk double speed." And I did that. Probably that's all the takes that Mark ended up using in the editor's room. He kept calling me, saying, "This movie will be four hours long "If you do not get them to speak faster." The thing you run into as a screenwriter, even with the best actors, is that you try to pace a scene to fit within an act structure and fit within the entire screenplay. But then actors wanna take very long, dramatic pauses. Actors want to look down and up, across the room, at each other, and finally say the line. - A lot of pausing. And that's what you're up against when trying to time out the length of the scene or act. I wanna say something about these actors. Once I got Edward Norton, I used Edward to get another actor. Once I got Ralph Fiennes, I used him, I got Emily Watson. - You parlayed them into each other. I said, "Philip Seymour Hoffman, I'm getting Mary-Louise Parker." I knew each one, who they were a fan of. I used them against each other to get them in the movie. I literally thought I'd be able to walk onto the set, and it would be the easiest movie I'd ever made because I had these brilliant actors. I could just say, "Action." I read one article or something about this movie that said this was the most distinguished cast that's been assembled in any movie in the last 20 years. But the truth is, it was probably the hardest movie I'd ever made because the smarter the actor, the more experience they have. It's a myth that these great actors don't need direction. They want direction more than any other actor. They want direction, but they have ideas of their own because in the end, it's up to them. They are the ones whose face is filling that whole screen. And they have to absolutely believe what they are doing, or they can't convince an audience of it. What I'm trying to say is, there was a lot of dialogue going on. A lot of intellectual discussions. And each of these actors are not only smart actors, but they're highly intelligent, all smarter than myself and... A lot of them have also directed or even written as well. They all had an opinion. And my job, I felt like it was my job to save the script. This was a script that worked to me. We had a table reading of it. It was fantastic. And Ted was

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Len Wiseman

Is this different? - Look at those eyebrows. No, this isn't... I don't think anything's really been all that different. A lot of... Hold on. - Well, then why are we here? A lot of it's in the third act. There was a lot of stuff that we cut out. Third act. - Like your whole back-story. That thing. I don't want... We don't gotta watch that. Yeah, we are going to watch that. You say that now. You cried. - I did not cry. You cried. - I told you I was fine with it. ridiculous theory.

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Noah Baumbach

Well, I hope we don't sound phony and pretentious on this thing. I hope not. We talk a lot about ourselves. - Yeah. And about work. And some intellectualizing that we never would have... - Done in any other circumstances? Nor stuff did we think about when we were writing it because we tried to write it just more as honestly as we could without really overthinking anything. We're trying to make it something funny and entertaining. But you can't say that for two hours, so you keep trying to say-- And then you talk about wallpaper and costumes. Then you start saying things like, "Well, he's an invention of a child's imagination, trying to connect to..." But I don't know if that's true. We just thought he was a funny character. You know, I'll say one thing here. This thing they're walking on, we were out, and this is in Naples, where they're walking along this and the credits are going. We're driving along and we see this breakwater thing with rats on it. I asked if we could get off there, and the guy didn't want us to. He said the cops were gonna come, and then I said... Anyway, he let us get off. And this is the most strange, bizarre thing. It doesn't connect to any land. It's just a cement thing in the middle of the water. I said we have to shoot something here. This is what I came up with, which is a, you know... It's almost, you know... You would say it's inspired by, if not stolen, from the end of Buckaroo Banzai, which is why I said Jeff Goldblum was in it too because he's in that as well. We probably talked about Buckaroo Banzai, you know, and using this kind of idea before we knew Jeff was gonna play Hennessey. That's true. - So in some ways, Jeff playing it makes it seem less of a steal and more of an homage, but it's pretty much just a steal. I wonder if we'll ever get to see this ship again. Where is the ship now? - It's in Malta, in drydock, and Ian, the marine coordinator, theoretically owns it now. But it was such a beautiful ship. It was such an amazing thing to be able to go on. This must be totally boring for people to hear me say this. And then there's Ned smoking the pipe, up at the top. Yeah. There he is at the top. In whatever dream this is. This is something that Bogdanovich had talked about. He used it in The Last Picture Show, which I feel like you do in a lot of your movies. But it is that idea of a curtain call, of like, you know... Someone might argue that, you know, when you finish a movie, you wanna sort of throw people into the credits and their own lives. And for different movies, then there's this idea of, you know, letting people ease their way out of the movie by giving a kind of, you know, whatever a film version of a curtain call. Yeah, and also, you know, with Ned, because he dies and everything, it's kind of nice to bring him back at the very end. Yeah. And nice to see that Werner joins the team. And the intern becomes official. And he didn't get an incomplete. Who cares what he got because he's dropping out. And going full-time. And this is Seu Jorge playing in the opera house in Naples. We didn't have a real plan for exactly how all these Seu Jorge performances were gonna work in there. I was shooting them wondering, "Am I really gonna make this work?" But somehow, his energy and this thing of it... For some people, it's probably, "Oh, no, we're gonna cut back to the guy playing these songs again? They don't have enough story to tell?" But I think for a lot of people, he works. He weaves something together in the movie, and for me, anyway, he brings something special to it. That makes me wanna go back to him over and over. It's funny, what you were also saying about Roman's second unit stuff, it's funny how when you're filming a movie, sometimes, you know, you shoot some stuff on a whim, and then it ends up becoming a huge part of, you know... A whole other texture to the movie. Yes, it was only because of Roman's second-unit work that made it possible for us to do this thing day one. You know, setting at sea, and day 14, you know, the Belafonte, et cetera. Roman collected a lot of these shots, and the movie needed that sort of simulation of structure that it kind of provides. Instead of it seeming like a basic stream of consciousness, which is closer to what it was. Makes it seem like it's not stream of consciousness. Although we do think structurally, but it's a different structure. Yeah, it's our structure. - Yeah. What we see as structure instead of what Eric Rohmer might refer to as structure.

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was actually the parking structure of the velodrome, which was in the former East Berlin and is a bicycle racing facility, an indoor bicycle racing facility. And in something that we became quite used to was freezing. We had two weeks of summer on the film and the rest of it was winter.

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John Cameron Mitchell

you often hit the same beats. Yeah, we knew where we were gonna go. But this is an example of how you open it up to the improvisational process within the structure. I remember we often did like really, you guys went way off the script, and then sometimes we kind of came back a little bit closer to the script later in the day. But it was a difficult day, even though the camera was very stationary. It was that perfect example of an actor trying to get back to the way it was in rehearsal.

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Really quickly, this is a scene that was added after the fact. Actually, Kate and her friend were watching this, the rough cut, and we go right from the climax of the love scene, cutting straight to this.

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Not a lot of time to shoot this. No, I mean, this was going to be a much... There was a whole way... It's typical, sorry. It's a much bigger battle thing. That battle was going to be like a little mini three-act story. And it just turned out we would have needed extra weeks of shooting, so we didn't really get every part that we had wanted.

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Roman Coppola

I remember, Roman, while we were writing it, we-- You always described it as being... That our writing process was that we were in a forest... Well, how did you--? How would you--? What did you say exactly? It was something to the effect that we were in a forest, and we had-- We were going someplace that we'd been to before, but we didn't have a map, yet we knew, when we had various signposts along the way or features, that was correct. It's like, "Oh, yeah, there's a stream, that's right. That's-- We're getting closer." So it was just a sensation of rediscovering something that we already knew-- You know, that already kind of existed. We were just finding it again. And you used to say-- Like, when we'd come up with something that felt right, you'd say, "Yeah, that's in the forest." - "It's in the forest." Yes, yes. We knew those woods. It seems like often when people are writing, they will-- They-- People describe this sort of metaphorical thing of, it's as if the thing already exists and you know it's right when it's-- That seems like the thing that was preordained to go there when you come up with that. But I guess it's not ever truly the case. I mean, it-- But it really is-- That is the sensation so often. - Yeah. When the thing really feels right, you say, "Gosh--" And often there's this thing that happens where there's something that you've written and sort of set it aside, some fragment of a scene or some idea for something that keeps getting rejected and not working out, and then all of a sudden, you say, "Oh, you know what? It's this." Hmm. - "It fits in here." Then you really do think there is some overarching structure that we're not totally aware of. Anyway, something subconscious is sometimes at work, it seems like, with making stories. Wake up, Jack.

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Patrick Tatopoulos

The fights are really nice in this picture, Patrick. They're really on par with the other two, certainly. Allan Poppleton was our New Zealand stunt coordinator. He did a fantastic job. - He did a great job, yeah. So, what you're seeing here is actually the set... ... you're gonna see later in the movie, an early stage of the castle. We tried to minimalise the dressing so it felt a little different. But it's basically the same space that you'll see later. And this was the first day of shooting. - Yeah, the balcony part. Yup. The big reveal. Wanna tell you a story about the castle. The castle is such a gigantic structure. Of course, there was no way to build this. We ended up building the, what you would call, the courtyard of the castle. How many feet tall, Richard? - About 20 feet. Twenty-five, 30 feet, yeah. Which was a little challenging for the lighting... ...because we were there on top of the set. When we started, it was difficult for CGI guys to kind of extend that. Yeah, it was terrible for Sound too. Every time it rained, we'd stop shooting. The train outside, the train station? - Yeah, the train... Note to self: Do not build set next to railroad tracks next time. We have a few transformation... ...but this one actually is not a transformation. It looks like one, but everything is practical. There's nothing mechanical or anything. I love it. It's a little more American Werewolf in London approach. There is no CG help whatsoever, though. Unlike the others.... This took a while to get right, just this whole prelude... ...and Kate's voiceover, and getting people caught up. There is a lot of history, and to decide, you know, where exactly to start... ...and how much to prep it with. Hopefully, we covered everything we needed to. It looks like we moved really quickly through. I wish we had a little bit more space, a little bit more in the... Yeah. - There's so much story to....

1:59 · jump to transcript →

Apart from the action, that's where I was really thinking about camera angles and making each action sequence have its own identity. So far, that's kept me out of trouble. I think there's too many movies where people think about the camera work before they do the sequence and then the narrative structure just goes out the window. Style over content is something I used to scream at directors when I was a producer. Content's more important. I mean, I think if people come out of a movie and say, hey, that cinematography and camera work was great, that means the film sucked.

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I think in the very early draft... ...we actually started cutting her up. Yeah. And then we realized, but she's healing instantly... ...SO actually that will just be a problem. It'd be kind of comical. Cut, cut, cut. - "She's healing!" Also here we.... I remember we just had scrubs on them, but Monique... ...who did the costume, she made this Antigen Labs.... The scrubs. Yeah. - Yeah. They were special. Michael Ealy's big moment. The blooper gun. This is the first time that this gun is used on film actually. Is it? - Yeah. We're trendsetters. Yep. Yep. This big black one. - Yep. Parking Level 3. Doesn't sound menacing, though. Blooper gun. No. It sounds like a joke. - Yeah. But the gun guys, who are really cool guys in Vancouver... ...when they were talking about... ... there had been this convention in Las Vegas. A gun convention in Vegas, and I said, "I actually wanna go there." God bless America. Yeah. God bless America. Here's a shot while we're in... While editing... - Great shot. While editing, everybody hated this because it looked so silly. And James, when you came in, "I think it looks pretty bitchen." And it does. - I know. It's funny when you go through all editorial with gray-scale animation... ... approximating what people are gonna look like... ...and then you finally see it done... ... it transforms the movie. It goes from being really bad to go to very exciting. It's... Yeah. - That's a huge step. That's a nice step, though. I like it when that happens. I remember shooting this. Kate was like, "Where's the camera?" "It's right behind here." "Naughty. Naughty." And also, you know, seeing all the gray scale and stuff... That's why we didn't test the film because it's pointless. You can't see what it looks like. It does look silly and just like a bad cartoon... ...So there's no point in testing it. Because, you know, even we, who are supposed to be really good at this... ...when you see it all together... ... you know, the final product, so much happens... -.,.be@Cause... - Let's be honest. And James can speak to this better than anybody... ...but my recollection was that in the last week prior to delivery... ... there were still 200 shots you hadn't received. Easily. - Yeah. I'd walk into his office every morning and it was like... These are things... - "How is it?" What's it like?" "A hundred and forty shots left." It was Wednesday and we had to deliver it Friday. The studio was saying, "You have to deliver the film three weeks earlier... ...than you thought you had." - That was a blow. There are versions of the visual effects that are different in the IMAX version... ...to the theatrical 2D to theatrical 3D, the video master. It was all depending on what the schedule would allow for. We kept working until... ...we couldn't do any more. I'm very happy here. We never shot the reverse of the guy getting shot. And people were angry at me because I was directing this day. But it's because the effect is there. When the effect wasn't there, it didn't work. I Know. But I think that's cool. Because I think it looks very '70Os. - It's like, "Shut up. Just get out of my way." - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Shaft kind of cool. Then this is one of my favorite blood splatters. That one. - That's real, actually. That was beautiful. Real? Did we shoot those guys? - Yes. Yeah. I love them. I will now resign. Did we kill people? - They meant they had squibs. Selene has to make the choice, does she go back to her husband or lover? Or does she go after her daughter? - Yep. Or does she try to have both? - The dilemma. One of the things that we were struggling with... ...In this script was that we thought, "Can we have a good third act?" Because the second movie, it's... The setting is so beautiful... ... with its old castle and underwater and so on. And, I mean, we scouted so many parking lots, it was obscene. Yep. Another example of how we wanted to hurt her so much. Yeah, that was Alicia, our stunt double, taking that hit. She landed on it. She's insane. - Yeah, well... Here's a shot that we don't think Is silly. No. No. It works. - Works. At least we think so. I hope you guys watching this think so as well. But it was always like: "Oh, so only his hand will grow very, very large and hairy. This will look so extremely silly." But it actually worked. This is when I think homage is really in a good way. Yeah. - It's not a fucking steal. It's you take something from 7... ...and you do it... - Underworld 7. The drop through the floor, right? - Yeah. And you update it. - Invert it. It's inverted. So I think that that's... That works really good. Len's-- That was Len's idea. The whole-- It's very scripted... ...how he shoots it.

1:04:06 · jump to transcript →

Joss Whedon

There's a lot of buys in something like this. And to have a purple guy show up in the beginning of the third act, uh, it's a big buy. And so to be able to have these little moments that help explain the story of his rather convenient consciousness, it's both necessary and an exciting piece of texture. I can barely talk about how cool Bettany is, and what great work they did on his face, both in makeup, and then after the fact, because all the rendering of textures on his face made it very easy to give him what we refer to as digital Botox, to take away the expressiveness in his eyes, and so the little wrinkles and things that you wouldn't expect to see on an android, that you need for him to be what Bettany brought, is actually very difficult to render and very beautifully accomplished. This moment when he asks, "

1:34:29 · jump to transcript →

And Heike, the costume designer, was standing next to me looking at me and thinking, oh, now my plan for the makeup is gone because, yeah, he stuck half his face in the mud, but she always went with it and then used that and created this two-face structure in his face. So here's a shot coming up. We shot with four different cameras, just to explain in a second. There's a white shot coming up.

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Tim Burton

It sets the tone. Even though it's a bit organic and moving, there's a structure to what you're basing it upon.

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