Voiceover & narration

You know, Tom said, this is like, he said, this is like taking a warm bath. It's like, I'm so comfortable in this character. He was at a point where he got the character, he narrated the entire movie, and I shot every line of narration on film because we were there for, I think, three days, just doing him narrate, doing the bench. And, of course, those big shots and stuff. But I knew that if we didn't shoot every line on film,

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it would sound more read than performed. It would sound narrated. So he performed every line of narration. And then after that, we just, you know, completely powered through Forrest. He just had it down for the rest of the movie. And then, of course, those were all the heavy scenes we had to do came after we were done. When we were on the stages here, we were done with On Location. I think the other thing that happened on this movie as a process was...

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The narration worked like this. There were obvious pieces of it that were scripted very early on. They were always in the script. We recorded all the narration that was scripted ahead of time before we shot the movie. And I had it with me on a little cassette player that I gave to the script supervisor. Because I had to build these pauses into...

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The character in the hat here, never actually called by name in the movie, this sniggering hat character, began the film, as you'll recall, with a splendid bit of narration, setting the mood for so much of what follows. Well, his speech, as it now stands, over the opening plate shots, not the plate shots, the shots, the opening speech now includes a rather clangorous non sequitur. Having discussed the story's Texas milieu, this character says...

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Now in Russia, they've got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else. A very wonderful speech, this opening bit of narration, marred only by that incongruous reference to communist Russia. Naturally, the line feels awkward because that line was never meant to be spoken. The line as originally written and performed was, In Bulgaria, Dad's got it mapped out so everyone pulls for everyone else. In Bulgaria, you see. And a reference to

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And so little appreciated. How many of us watching this movie even realized that a flying insect didn't just happen to be there? At any rate, in Bulgaria, dads got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else. This is what the line was meant to be. This was the introduction to our narrator, this man with the fly. Some more sweat here, very artfully applied.

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through the voiceover, and then I started making pictures through the voiceover, and Nick would work out the scene that the voiceover, that another part of the book described, and I would say, but that's so wonderful in the description of the voiceover, let's use that voiceover over that scene, etc. And so it was very clearly constructed that way, every shot. Because he knew what the movie looked like, he would say, now this scene, I want this, think window, think we're in a window, because I want the scene to be in a window, I want to be looking out the window at something.

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a reflection of the whole world. Lois, do you understand what we're involved in here? I don't care. I need my hat. I won't fly without it. I wanted the soundtrack to the voiceover to become, especially by that point, the last day as a wise guy, by that point to become almost like a piece of music. It even doesn't matter what he's saying anymore. It's just rattling words, rattling words until finally the cop

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policeman holds a gun in his head and says, don't move, I'll blow your brains out. And the most unexpected thing comes out of his mouth and voiceover. He says, I knew it had to be cops, because if it was wise guys, I'd be dead. They don't tell you. They just shoot. So he was relieved. And the relief on his face is a relief of the whole film, really. His whole life, in a way. If they had been wise guys, I wouldn't have heard a thing. I would have been dead.

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Alan K. Rode

and Stanley's partner and collaborator over three films and a fine director in his own right, Jim Harris remains with us at age 93, and I'll be referring to some of his published observations and comments. One of the killing's distinctive attributes is this voiceover narration by the legendary Art Gilmore, who should have been credited but wasn't.

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Alan K. Rode

I've read that this voiceover was imposed on Kubrick and Harris by United Artists, and some believe it detracts or dates the film. And I'm not one of those who feel that way. I grew up listening to Gilmore's voice on literally thousands of movie previews and television shows like Highway Patrol. For me, the voice of Art Gilmore is always a welcome presence. The cast of The Killing is a virtual character actor hall of fame, and this wasn't by happenstance.

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Alan K. Rode

Don't make it sound so ominous. It's not like you're going to eat me alive. I'll make you do that. The fade-out implies the sex occurring between Vince and Marie. All we need is a voiceover saying, and the next morning, or having them eat bacon and eggs in the morning at the breakfast table.

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It all affects one side of your body, so he had to flip-flop, and then the lighter, which was a right-handed lighter, he had to learn how to operate with his left hand once his hand was to unfold. I'm assuming you've seen the movie already, so I'm not spoiling anything for you with this narration. I'd say if you're listening to this track now, having seen the film for the first time, then we haven't done our job keeping your interest. And what you're going to see now...

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one of my favorite moments in that. Yeah, it was a hard one to execute. It was written so much like this idea. Oh, that's the fake subway. So if you kept walking, you wouldn't go down, so Kevin would, like, pretend to, like, crouch down as he would go further into the subway, but it wasn't a real hole. Fensterman McManus had a cagey proposition. A fast jump, high risk, long... This voiceover was actually written standing on the set of... Standing on the set, standing on the...

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...Disney lot, when I got a call from John Ottman saying that we needed a new voiceover... ...and I was on a cellular phone trying to make it make sense. There's another scene in the apartment here, which wasn't really necessary... ...and I shot a bit of with Edie, but... It came just prior to this. Yeah, but I removed it and went for the voiceover instead. It seemed more punctual this way.

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had his own media empire, and Welles had worked for the March of Time, and he's doing a pretty accurate parody of this. Yeah, it's even the prose style, you know, which had a ways of turning the sentences kind of backwards, you know, is even, that's imitated. Yes. And the guy who plays the reporter, William Allen, is the one who's sort of imitating the guy who did the narration, which was Van Voorhis.

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But I think that that's really what the point of the original story is. And we don't get that in Citizen Kane, really. Yeah, to the extent that the Bernstein section mirrors Bernstein, it's because it's memories of a happier time. And he's not going to be the narrator of the darker versions of Kane that we see as the film goes along. So, I mean, in fact, all the versions that we get of Kane are considered accurate and truthful.

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And Sinatra phoning every day. Yeah, did Sinatra... - Phone Ava every day? Did he? - Yeah. Heavens to Murgatroyd. There's the lovely Jonathan Adams who was our original narrator. Brilliant. Yes. - Plays Dr. Scott in this movie. And Brian Thomson used to put in hidden detail in those things, so there would be stuff inside that file. There might have even been stuff in those files behind him there. In that it was relative, but nobody was ever going to see. No. Well, to me, Brian Thomson's set was astonishing. It was unbelievable, and I've just been to see he King and /... Mm-hmm. - ...and the set he's just done for that. I adored it. - Yes, good, is it? Mm-hmm. Pity about the... - Sumptuous. Nah, nah, nah. - What? I didn't say anything. Nothing. You didn't say a thing. - Never heard a dicky bird there. Yeah. What a charming person. He'll be remembered in my will, actually.

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And this was cut from a lot of the original versions. This song was cult. 2 Toftind the truth ? And we cut straight to the narrator's verse. He says to tell the truth and never lied. We cut Brad and Janet's verses in this song and went straight to the narrator's verse on the original movie. And it made no sense whatsoever. - I see. 'Cause we needed this. There was a very long intro that Richard Hartley had devised for this song. And I suggested they cut straight to Brad's verse. And they cut straight to the narrator's verse, which was cutting both Brad and Janet's verse, which was rather stupid because it's kind of nice to have these two verses. Make the whole thing tie up, the whole song tie up.

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Roger Moore

He was a larger-than-life character, Ricky di Portanova. He had wonderful voice. He would say: "I could never act, but I had a wonderful voice. I did voiceovers." And Sandra was a beautiful Texan lady. Sadly, they both died within a few weeks of one another. And not knowing that the other had died in the same house. Great tragedy.

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Roger Moore

Ricky was not born into wealth. He was a working actor. And as he said, you know, one who just did voiceovers. And then he came into an enormous amount of money. I'm not sure whether it was from his stepmother. But he was exceedingly wealthy and had two beautiful homes... ...and a home in Monaco. He was great fun to be with. He was also a friend of Cubby's... ...and a friend of Frank's.

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We had lots of improvisations, too, of you being pushed in the pool and stuff like that. We did voiceover, didn't we? I'm supposed to be the host, guys. Yeah, joke's a joke, but I'm supposed to be the host here. We were waiting the shot so you could get the lights to go off. Do you remember that? That's right. And the guy who had to turn the lights off was called Mr. Knickerbocker. Do you remember? Well, I remember you waiting to get the lights off. Did they go off? Yeah. Okay, when did they go off?

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who was interested in the film left. And a whole new regime came in, none of whom cared a whit, a toss about the music. So it was tough going. Alex, take these people through these, this big character introduction scene. Now that's- Well that, the Venetta McGee, who from last, seen in a wonderful Spaghetti Western called The Big Silence. Sy Richardson just came in and that line that you said, somebody piss on the floor again, was a voiceover line afterwards that you had wanted to say and so we squeezed it in.

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Darren Aronofsky

The shot was actually shot without our makeup artist. She had to leave early and it required some makeup because I had to put blood onto Max Cohen's nose and I was convinced that Ariella was gonna beat me up the next day, but she turned out to be real nice about it. And the voiceover you're hearing was written by me and Sean. It was a collaboration that we started about eight months

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Darren Aronofsky

I bought the ants. He still doesn't know what they mean. So this little voiceover segment was written by Sean. Here we have the tree that I was telling you to look out for if you remember what it looked like in the first act. It was a little bit more contrasty. This we wanted to go for a lot more moody, and we also changed the frame rate. He's moving a lot slower, and the tree itself is moving a lot quicker and a lot more manically.

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and I really wouldn't have made it with any other actor. You know, in the world of comedy, there really is no question that Jim Carrey is an absolute virtuoso. And I so enjoyed the collaboration. It was exhilarating. Why, no one quite knows the reason. Hey, kids, here's a present for you. Be sure to run real fast with it now. Come on, double time. Let's go. Move, move, move! It could be that his head wasn't screwed on just right. It was wonderful having Anthony Hopkins as the narrator, particularly in this opening sequence.

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and he stuffed all the food up the chimney with glee. And now, grinned the Grinch. I'll stuff up the tree. And the Grinch grabbed the tree and he started to shove when he heard a small sound like the coo of a dove. Excuse me. All of this narration is very literally taken from the book. The Grinch had been caught by this tiny hoo daughter.

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Ted Tally

This is the scene where, as scripted, we began to hear the Dragon's voice. We dropped it because... We dropped it because it turned out that it's much more effective to just see Ralph hearing it without the audience hearing it. In a performance, a voiceover is used when you need to help tell a story... In fact his performance is telling the story, there are voices in his head. In a way, it might have just detracted from his performance. It's a great shot. It's actually on a stage. The character is in so much pain. He's very tormented. It's not something you usually see in the bad guy in one of these movies. He's fighting it. He doesn't want to be the bad guy. He likes her actually, he's fond of her. He is. And this is a great scene that really expresses that. I think this is where the audience Starts to go in... Usually, this kind of character in this kind of movie is just a sort of sadist. - Bad guy! He's a bad guy, a sadist, who really enjoys the things he does. The audience has to get empathy for him at this point. This character really doesn't enjoy what he does. He feels driven to do it. He feels that he's forced to do it by the Red Dragon. He would almost rather kill himself than go on in torment. It's an amazing thing for the bad guy in a thriller to be seen in that kind of light.

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Ted Tally

That was a little storytelling thing, you know, helping, because you really couldn't hear her lines. Of course. There goes Grandma. There was a very complicated lighting set up for this. I read a cinematography article where Dante talked about how many different kinds of banks of lights that he had to set up for this one shot, right here. This is a real fire, but we enhanced it with CGI. This is a real fire. He's got this fire, but he's got to light the actors with extra instruments that are hidden out of shot. He's got the natural light of the cars. The lights flashing around. Francis Dolarhyde! Where is he? Look how many things are happening with light in this one nighttime shot. I put my hand in it. He set fire to the house. It's all justified because the headlights of the... It's red, it's blue, it's yellow. That was such a big explosion. You had to be half a mile away from it. All these stuntmen... I guess some people are wondering, "Why is there such a big explosion?" Actually, in the book, Dolarhyde has dynamite stored in this house for some unspecified future project. And you'd written a shot when we looked in the safe... I'd written a shot where we saw the dynamite, it didn't end up in the movie. We finally just decided, it's an old house, it's got... Let's lose the dynamite and keep... It's got oil tanks in it and the tanks blow up. I love this close-up of Emily. She just... What a face. Who could resist a charmer like me? You know, whatever part of him was still human... We really wanted that hair job to work, so we went crazy. You didn't draw a freak. Okay? It's a good scene for Edward, too. ...with a freak on his back. I should have known. No, sometimes you don't. Trust me... Initially, this scene was written as a sort of voiceover. Actually, it was one of Brett's, you know. Brett is very, very good on text, too. Just like Dino and Martha. And Brett said, "The audience loves this character "and we have to honor her by having a farewell with her." We have to see her. We have to give her some closure with him. They have to have a real scene together. The last time we saw her she was crying outside the house. And it was one of the best ideas that Brett had as the script was being revised, before we even started shooting. Dr. Voss, please call Pharmacy 4421. I love this scene that we came up with. This helped pay off the end. This is setting up the ending in a way that's not really in the book, I don't think. We needed for him to have knowledge of Dolarhyde that he could only have if he'd seen this big journal. So we went back and forth about how could he find this journal if that house blew up. Finally we thought, if we put the journal in the safe, it could conceivably have withstood that explosion. We were torn between, do we do a kid's drawing or a picture?

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Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

We used to call this the pizza, didn't we? The pizza place. This was funny. We rewrote this voiceover about 50 million times and the last time was when Pete was about to record with Christopher Lee. I was in Malta actually doing ADR with Gimli and I was out shopping in a gift shop and my phone rang and it was Fran saying, we've got to fix this line, Pete's about to record it. Which was the line? It was the fires of industry line. The old ways of burning in the fires of industry. That's right, we couldn't get it right. It is, it's a Stephen line.

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Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

But when we came to cutting it, we wanted to create a much more emotional ending. And so all of what you're hearing Sam say is something that we had him go into a recording studio and record for us. It was never originally shot. It exists here only as voiceover. Thank God we had him walking over to the window and at least starting to say something. Yeah, you could cut away. Because it enabled us to create this feeling of a resolution. And in a sense, it's tying the separate threads of the story together, isn't it? Yeah. That's why we did it. In the end, you have to think what

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Yuri's journey, Nicolas Cage's character. He also starts life in Ukraine and eventually is responsible for the death of child soldiers. Hopefully this sequence sets the tone for the film. I wanted the film to be subversive. It's the reason this peacenik anthem is playing in the background. It's the same with Yuri's narration in the film. The narration was...

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There was a line of narration here about, I think Yuri says there's a shortage of coffins in Sierra Leone because demand is so high. But I took it out because it was too flippant, even for Yuri. This shot coming up in the truck is actually a pickup. It was done in the Czech Republic because I didn't have time to do it in South Africa.

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James McTeigue

I know there's no way I can convince you... ... this is not one of their tricks, but I don't care. lam me. My name is Valerie. I don't think I'll lve much longer. I wanted to tell someone about my life. This is the only autobiography that I will ever write and, God... .../'m writing it on toilet paper. There is always that great history of the first people... ...picked on or imprisoned are minorities. And it was important to, you know, show the Valerie character... ...and where she starts off with... ...and where, you know, where her life leads her... ...and then, you know, how the government come in... ...and they sweep up all those people... ...and then... ...and then how it affects Evey... ...and how Evey comes to, like, understand what has happened to those people... ...and how it, I guess it really sparks her political consciousness after her parents. Natasha, who plays Valerie is really, really lovely. And she, I mean, incredible actress. And James had her on set so that when I was reading the letter... ... that she would be reading it live for me... ...Which made it so much more human, instead of... I mean, not to disparage script Supervisors in any way... ...but a lot of times when there's voiceovers that you hear... ...the script supervisor will just read it from the script. And obviously they shouldn't be trying to act it out or anything... ...but that can be a very cold feeling. When you have the actual actor there, that's pretty amazing. For me, it's a point in the film where you're both propelled on... ...and also you're propelled backwards. And so you're going down this fantastic rabbit hole... ...at a point in the film where it expands the film... ...and it expands your mind. And you have to stay on the train you're on, but also at the same time... ...get onto another train. And I love it when films do that. So It's a fantastic thing to do at that point in time. It also is a very important back-story for V as well. Because it's to that note... ...1S something that links all three characters. And, you know, I love that all that... The thing that changes them... ... IS written on a piece of toilet paper. I think that is, like, totally fantastic. You would. I'd always known what I wanted to do with my life... ...and in 2015 I starred in my first film, The Salt Flats. lt was the most important role of my life. Not because of my career... ... but because that was how I met Ruth. The first time we kissed... ...I knew I never wanted to kiss any other lips but hers again.

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James McTeigue

I wanted to trick the audience, I guess. You know, I absolutely wanted you to keep guessing... ...or not really Knowing. And because Tim Pigott-Smith, the Creedy character... ... had just been up there, and he'd just... ... he'd just bashed Stephen Fry, yeah, the Deitrich character. When you got into the interrogation, I wanted you to think it was him. Maybe it was Creedy. But I changed his voice. You know, I got Tim Pigott-Smith... ...but I got another actor to come and voice over him... .1n the same way that when Natalie gets her head dunked... ...it's done by Hugo. And it's done by, like, the V character. But I put a different voice on the guy. I also wanted to play into, you know, with the Creedy character.... The two characters are actually broken up. Which you sort of get, but you don't get. One's called the interrogator and one's called Rossiter. It's essentially like the good cop and the bad cop. And the Creedy character was the bad cop... ...and the stuff that Hugo says... ... IS essentially the good cop, Rossiter. He comes and he pleads with her. "Just one little piece of information." And they're little, they're just one-liners. So you can kind of get away with that. Yeah. - Yeah. Then you have no fear anymore. You're completely free.

1:18:52 · jump to transcript →

Don't touch me. Len, can I take off my shirt? I mean, do you mind if I, like... Like, Speedman, man. Look. At some point. Len, if I wear high heels, nobody will see me because you shoot me from the waist up. Why does Kate get to wear them and I don't get to wear them? What's up with that? We, at one point, did have that line over the close-up of the hands. Yes, there was a voiceover of Alexander saying...

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Yeah, this is real water. Is it? Real water. We shot this in Vancouver. This is actually a... We were kind of actually, honestly scraping by to find something for the voiceover. Originally, the voiceover was just in black. And we didn't have anything to put behind Kate's voiceover. And so we pulled some of the Vancouver aerial footage that we shot to put in behind it just because the voiceover ended up being a bit longer than... It was too long in black.

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Joss Whedon

It became apparent that the two of them walking into a dark room, looking for something, and then talking to someone who had clearly called them there, gave us the information that we needed, and also kept them a little more mysterious. The scene was so mundane, and they were So... Just such normal bickering siblings, that it didn't... Didn't really add to their grandeur. This is the first time we see Ultron. And I look back, and I'm... The fact of him sitting in that chair is very, sort of, based on the great, sort of, John Buscema kind of... "The tortured king and the weight of the throne" kind of thing. But then he stands up, and that's how he's revealed. And I thought, "That's less cinematic than it could have been," after the fact. Children... This little bit that he says here is also really important in the theme. Simply because one of the first things I ever wrote when sort of just freestyling about Ultron in my head, was that children all kill their parents, because once you have them, you no longer care as much about yourself. You accept your place in the cycle of the world, and you know that you'll die, but there's something more important to you than that. And then, in parenthesis, I wrote, 'cause I was sending this out as a memo, "Don't worry, nothing like that will ever appear in the film." And then it actually did. But I do think that a connection that even I didn't make is because so much of this is about power... Yet also, so much of it is about family, and the responsibility we have not just as leaders or as heroes, but as parents. There is no time when anybody in the world understands what the truly powerful can do and go through, unless they're parents. Until the moment they're parents. And then, suddenly, they have complete mastery over somebody's mind. Not forever. In the case of my kids, not even for that long. But there is the ability to uplift or destroy. It is a perfect connection between what is going on in this movie, politically and thematically, and what is going on personally. This shot here is one of my favourite shots in the film, just the way Ultron listens. Again, ILM, they had James Spader's performance to work off of. They had face-capture on him, so he wore cameras on his face the whole time. But they really took it and used it, and managed to make a man who's made out of metal not just sound, but move like Spader and give the performance. When James took the gig, he said, "I don't wanna do voiceover work. "I wanna be able to give a performance." And, my God, he did. And they did such an extraordinary job of capturing it, so much so that when he is standing there doing nothing, I cannot stop looking at him. I developed a huge... Not even a man-crush, like a teenage girl-crush on Ultron. Like, I want a picture of him over my bed, and I wanna write about him in my diary, and I wonder if he's thinking about me. He's just gorgeous. 'Course, there's a lot of gorgeous to go around. This bit, there was a lot more of. We played the mystery of "What's up with Barton?" a lot. Is he still possessed? Is he villainous? Is he something terrible? Ultimately, we just kept the fact that he says, "I don't have a girlfriend," and then later says, "Girlfriend." My issue with it was simply... I mean, people felt, "Can we get some time out of here?" My issue was, I've just felt that people would only think that he was talking to Fury. Since he had been a S.H.1.E.L.D. agent, and we've never seen Fury, and we know that S.H./.E.L.D. is gone, that they wouldn't think that he was up to something dire. They would just think, "Oh, he's listening to his old boss." And the dancing I would have to have gone through to make that clear that he wasn't just didn't seem worth the effort. So we kept just a little bit of it. I miss it. I miss the idea of, "What's his dark secret? "What's his dark secret?" 'Cause I think it's important. His dark secret is obviously the crux of the film. And, I mean, the fulcrum, the thing upon which the entire film revolves, um, changes.

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Joss Whedon

It's just that I don't understand. I can't say enough about that moment. I was sitting next to Paula, the script supervisor, Paula Casarin, who's the best in the biz, and I looked at her, I was like, "Did he just say 'oh'? "Do you think he'll do that again? "Do you think he'll do it again?" Because James learns everything word-for-word. That's his M.O., like it's a play. And I was like, "You gotta do the 'oh.' You gotta do the 'oh. And then he did it when we rolled. And I went up to him, and the first thing he said was, "I added an 'oh.'I hope that's okay. "Il can do it again without, if you like." I'm like, "No, I love you." I don't think I said that, but you could see it in my eyes. The idea that Ultron is emotionally so capricious is just something I hadn't really seen in an Al movie, particularly one where the robots are going to decide that all humanity must be killed. For him to be the most human, the most temperamental, was very important. And it's why Spader's the only guy. Because he can do that sort of classic Keith David, "You want me to do voiceover "because I make the subwoofer explode "with the gravitas of my basso profundo." But then he can become completely goofy.

45:45 · jump to transcript →

reminiscent, with the sorcerer speaking a voiceover with ominous drumming. This is Mount Hekla, a volcano in Iceland, which early on in my research I found was referred to as the Gates of Hell, and thus became a large story point.

0:38 · jump to transcript →

Defoe did this voiceover right after we wrapped all the scenes we shot him in, and we did it in the longhouse, and it's quite impressive. These hammers are based on amulets of Mjolnir, Thor's hammer. And Tommy Dunn, the armorer, did a fantastic job of...

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Eng Commentary

In contrast to his trouble with pictures, Antoine now reveals himself as a writer of sorts, as we glimpse him writing his testament in graffiti on the classroom wall. He has a kind of creative knack, that is, but it seems always to come out in socially unacceptable ways. Note that we hear the testament in Antoine's off-camera voiceover, even though our eyes are taken back to the schoolyard.

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Novelist Tim Lucas

Dr. Elephant on Astro Boy, and the narrator of Kimba the White Lion. Moved by the atmosphere of this church, India was going to tell his gang about their next caper in the form of a sermon. It adds the word messianic to his list of complexes. Let's not overlook the fact that he begins his story with Once Upon a Time. Once upon a time there was a carpenter.

37:40 · jump to transcript →

No. Lawrence Naismith portrays Sir Donald Munger. Naismith had appeared in two other films produced by Cubby Broccoli, The Black Knight and The Trials of Oscar Wilde. He is best remembered for his portrayals of Merlin the Magician in the 1967 film version of the hit musical Camelot and as Captain Smith in A Night to Remember about the sinking of the Titanic. Careful listeners will notice a repeated line of voiceover in this sequence. Sir Donald's line, which begins,

9:45 · jump to transcript →

Roisman was one of the premier DPs back in the day. And by the way, that actor who's bowing and scraping to the Japanese visitors is an actor named Christopher Murney, who is probably more famous for his voice than his face. He does a lot of voiceovers. Again, one of the things that's interesting about this set is it was built in Harlem at a place called Filmway Studios, which was a very well-known

24:06 · jump to transcript →

Though the dialogue has Barry Convex telling Max that he wants to put Videodrome on Channel 83, as Max crawls out of the room, a voiceover recorded in post-production tweaks the meaning of the scene to say that Barry and the interests he represents want Channel 83 itself. Give us Channel 83. Kill your partners. Kill them.

1:03:33 · jump to transcript →

When we were in previews, I remember a friend of mine was explaining that one of the scenes didn't make sense, that Penny was too upset. And I said, why don't you understand? And then I realized that nobody understood about the different kinds of help that they had there. They just thought it was the staff and the help. So here we have Jack saying there are two kinds of help here. And so we put this over as a voiceover line so that then everybody understood the class structure within the staff.

6:12 · jump to transcript →

Dean Cameron did a wonderful job in this. Yes, you tell me now he does a lot of voiceovers. He does a lot of voiceovers. And he lost that beautiful black hair. He's a little thinner on top these days. Larry, how's my ass? Where's Larry? He's nocturnal. Oh, okay. This is really the introduction of all the characters. I know, and very well done by Jeff Franklin, the writer.

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My last note on the music, I think, more than anything, perfectly captures Patricia's character, Alabama, because she's got this childish innocence. And really, the movie is the movie seen from her point of view as we open with her voiceover. It is Patricia's movie. You know, what was unique for this script with me was that I went out to...

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Alexander Payne

This scene of Tracy pogoing in the hall had been accompanied by voiceover, and quite good voiceover, voiceover taken largely from the novel. And it was in the film right up to the final mix, but Tracy's jumping is so adorable, and Rolf's music was so good that I decided to drop it at the last minute. It's just unnecessary.

1:17:26 · jump to transcript →

a voiceover from Mason Verger from his bedroom. He calls in Cordell, says, get me the Justice Department. It's oblique, it must be oblique, because you can't be that much on the nose. In fact, to me, that was almost too on the nose, but I needed it. I needed to suggest something, and if you heard it great and got it, that's perfect. If you didn't really understand what it was later,

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Simon West

And some small parts of that scene are still in this version, but as you can see, it was curtailed down to this voiceover and montage sequence of the letter, which is much shorter and quicker. The previous alignment of the nine planets. The people of the light built a great city in this crater where they worshipped the triangle for its ability to control time. It gave its possessor a power that could be used for good or great evil.

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Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

then this sequence started to feel like there was just too much narration. To some degree, that's probably true, but it is such a delightful sequence that I just felt that it deserved to be seen. And so, you know, for good or bad, here it is on this extended cut. Obviously, it establishes the book that Bilbo is writing, which we now see later in Rivendell.

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Danny Boyle and Alex Garland

because we got a friend of ours, Jukka, to do the voiceover at the end of the finished pilot. But sadly, we couldn't change the markings on the plane either. So that's a moment of hope, really, at the end of the film, and it's interesting

1:47:45 · jump to transcript →

Tom Tykwer

So thank you for joining me on this trip through the film. I hope you got some fresh information and enjoyed it. And of course I hope you will see the film without my nerve-wracking voice over it all the time again and enjoy it much more without me. Okay, bye-bye.

1:34:22 · jump to transcript →

Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens

The line that he was saying to Sam was the very last shot. In fact, the bit at the end when he says, there's room for a little more, was the very last moment. Bilbo once told me. We had Elijah recording a lot more voiceover, but it just felt too much talking. I can't even remember now what we ended up using. Not a great deal, because a lot of this just played better with music. No, we used there some. Yeah, we used like a fraction of what we ended up writing, what we actually originally wrote and recorded. Yeah. Where are we going?

3:52:06 · jump to transcript →

It's definitely one of the first things that grabs you when you watch the animated series. It's very unusual, very well done. This was always very interesting to me, to create a world that wasn't a futuristic world that felt like this kind of dreamt-up world, but something that had some kind of reality based on the issues that we're dealing with today. So I always liked that little write-up and that this world of Bragna with this voiceover that

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Francis Lawrence and Akiva Goldsman

Dogs. People. Sort of our nod to Sam. Sam. And Pippies, apparently. Dedicated his life to the discovery of a cure and the restoration of humanity. This ending, we felt, actually, interestingly enough, with this voiceover, is consistent with the idea of telling somebody's story. Right, of legend. He gave his life to defend it.

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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 →

Now you got it, right? - This is what I love. Once the gre... That's it going off. Okay. - Yeah. Well, I didn't know. Last night was the first time I had seen this shot finished. The MPAA, remember, was really worried... ...we were gonna put a giant set of genitalia on him. Oh, they did. - Oh, they did. Yeah, that's the director's cut version. This was hard, I think. Because we had just been in this violent extravaganza. And now for emotions. But I think it works. - It works great. Because Kate is good and India is good. "You came back for me." - Yeah. And I remem-- This-- All... The tears and so on on Kate is completely real. Yeah. - But this is why she is, you know... This is why Kate is a movie star. She times it so the tear comes exactly where you want it. And I remember.... You only get that from professional actors. They know their body like, you know, true musicians. Go. I'll send them... ...on a different path, buy you some time. This is a part of the movie where we struggled... ...tried to figure out what to do now. How do we end the movie? - Yeah. We went through so many different permutations. We did film Michael watching them. - Yep. From the roof. - Yep. This scene was always in the film. - Yeah. That she comes back and finds the.... There was a period where we weren't. No. This was actually decided... It was not in the script. This was halfway through the shoot, we realized we needed this scene. We didn't wanna end on a rooftop... ...because it's kind of cliché a little bit. We did it in our Swedish film, Storm, actually... So then we ended it on a rooftop. - So-- But, you Know.... Sometimes cliches work. - Yeah. I think it's better than a forest. lt worked for the voiceover. Yeah, it was in a forest. Yeah. That was-- Yeah. But you want a nice wide shot. - Right. You see the city, see the world. And.... - The close-ups. I remember waiting for Len to write this voiceover, it took forever. But then he got it, and it was great. - Then he delivers. Because you get this "fuck, yeah" feeling. I've always thought that it's Kate that writes them... ...but Len actually does write them. Well, we'll never know, will we? I like those guys. That's those Swedish guys, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Wonderful writers, John Hlavin... ...Michael Straczynski, Allison Burnett. Yep. There's Len again. - Len and John Hlavin. Kevin Grevioux, shout-out to Kevin. - That's right. Anyone fancy a pint? - We have to trash everyone. We have to trash those guys for sure. - Producers. David Kern, there he is. - And David Coatsworth. Good on you, mate. Yeah, that's it. - That's it. Scott Kevan, DP. Excellent. Yep. - In the house. Claude Pare. - Yes. Award-winning production designer. Jeff McEvoy, the gentleman. - Yes. He was there the whole time. - Monique Prudhomme, costumes. Paul Haslinger, Underworld veteran. Are you gonna go through all of these? I'm just reading. It's not that hard. Tricia and Deb did all of the Underworlds too. Couple of small words here. - Needs no introduction. India, she was the third girl or second girl in the room. Remember that? - Yes, absolutely. And we just looked at each other. "This is the girl." "This is the girl." In, like, five seconds. Me and Bjérn never did big Hollywood movies. But you sure as hell had before. - Yes. "Does it work like this? Can we say yes?" You were like, "Yeah, yeah. I think we should go." That was amazing. That'll be the last time that ever happens in your career. When we saw Theo, we all liked him... ...from the very beginning too. - Yeah. But India was... She was the first day of casting. But Theo we cast in London, though. Yeah, but the moment we saw the tape, it was done. But that was after going through a lot of people in L.A. Yeah. A lot. - Yeah. Richard Wright. - Yeah, how about that? Yeah. Love that guy. Yeah. - Yeah. Paul Barry. I Know it sounds funny but... We forgot to shout-out to Paul Barry. Paul and Nee Nee. - Best first AD ever. And here it says.... - Brad Martin. Gets his own card, damn it. - Yes. As he should. You should work with him if you wanna do good action. Oh, you know-- I actually am right now. How about that? Good for you. I thought this Evanescence song worked too, quite frankly. Yep. America's biggest Goth band. They're Americans? Yeah. - Yeah. Dude. - Yeah. "Dude." - What? But there's-- It's... When you sit here... ...and look at the names of all the people that worked on the movie... ... you realize what a collaborative effort these things always are. The fact that the five of us can sit in a room... ...and talk about it is one thing... ...but the filmmakers are really everybody on this list. Well, but the other.... I agree, but at the same time l.... After we finished shooting the film, which was a very difficult shoot... ...we came back to Los Angeles and we cut at the Lakeshore offices... ...and Mans and Bjérn were there religiously every day... ...putting their heart and soul into the movie. And I think they were... They put their heart and soul into the movie... ...from the moment we met them to the moment the movie was finished. So as producers, I think we have to really thank them. Thank you very much. - Yeah. That was very nice words, Gary. Thank you. - You're welcome. We are as tall as we are... ...because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Yeah. - And I kept saying to myself... And this is the part where everybody turns this stuff off. Nobody's listening right now. - We worked our asses off. But James McQuaide delivered on those visual effects. I Know. I gotta tell you, man.... It only took five years off the end of his life. Oh, jeez. The best he's ever done. lt was fantastic. It is very therapeutic to watch this. It is, isn't it? Yeah. - Now it is done. We can move on. - It's done. Yep. And it's Friday night at 6:20 p.m. And.... Film's opening tonight. - Yeah. Have we got numbers back? Have we got numbers about how it's doing? Yeah, very good so far. The advance New York early-screening report... Excellent. Didn't you say that it did great in Thailand? Taiwan. - Taiwan. Thank you, people of Taiwan. - Yeah, thank you, Taiwan. Shout-out to Taiwan. All right, so this is pretty much it. Thanks, everybody, for listening to our babbling. And have a good night or a good day or whatever. Are you gonna say something in Swedish?

1:16:16 · jump to transcript →

Scott Stewart Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Peter Gvozdas

There we see Josh. He gets into it. In terms of casting, as we talked about Carrie and all the qualities she brings, she's beautiful and she's warm and she's empathetic and she feels reliable. She feels like a reliable narrator and I felt like that was an important quality for Lacey because she's the first adult character to believe in the movie as to what's happening.

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So It Meant We Had Bloody Marys At 5

What did you say? I said, "/ can't swim." What does that have to do with anything? This is a beautiful wedding. Uh, thank you. Uh, yeah, it is. They really... Shooting in Hawaii has got its benefits. Am I right? By the power vested in me... I really want to know what in your brain makes swimming have anything to do with the gambling and the kid, but I don't want to get into it here. I just want you to know I'll be thinking about it for at least a month. That's great to hear. Where are you from, Margie? Ohio. That's a fake accent. Why did you just put on that accent that you haven't had the whole time? That... - Go, Cavs! All right, let's... All right. I don't trust anything you said anymore. "Go... Go, Cavs!" Is that how they even talk in Ohio? In fact, it's definitely not. I'm from Wisconsin. That's definitely not how they talk in Ohio. Can I come live with you? - No! Where? Why? No. I'm drawing the line. I got to go to the bathroom again! There she goes. What do you know about liquor? Man, I'm starting to hear it again through the door. Just a very... Great. When do I start? I mean, I mean, I mean... I mean... I can see you through the glass, now that you're back, Margie. You're just making pee sounds into the microphone. No, that was pee. I peed. Okay. - Okay. Well, it was a very short time to be gone peeing. I will say that. I think it was too short. What'd you say? - What? And, you know, to be honest, making this DVD commentary with Margie in away, you know, if I really think about it, is a lot like making a movie. There's adversity. There's things you don't expect that come up that you have to deal with. And you just have to get through it. And as we approach, you know, the end of our film here, it makes me realize maybe... 'Cause I'll be honest. You know, Margie, I was cursing you in my head a lot. And I was planning to immediately get out of here and call the producer and call the studio execs and ask for another voice-over session without you. And to do this over and... But, you know, I get to the end now and Igo, "You know what?" This is as, the most authentic commentary we probably could have done is showing the crazy shit you end up running against when you try to make a movie. We made a movie? No, we didn't... Yes, Margie, we made a movie. So you're part of that now. I just want to say, like, you know, guys, life is messy. Uh, it's never... Things don't go perfectly in life. And, uh, it's really how you get through the non-perfect things that make you who you are. I guess that's a good thing to get out of this. Just like Mike and Dave. And Alice and Tatiana. Just like Mike and Dave and Alice and Tatiana. Exactly. It didn't go perfectly. They didn't do all the right things. But at the end of the day, they pulled it together and got through it. And I think the family, the fictional Stangle family, is probably closer because of how much things went wrong and what they got through. But we just wanted everybody here to know... Wouldn't you say? Uh, yeah. Okay, suddenly not on board. Whatever. Um... We had some fun songs coming up here at the end of the movie. This, actually, also was added in halfway through production. I don't think these songs were in the script. We started wanting to do a fun little musical number at the end of the movie that also, hopefully, didn't feel too much just like tagging a musical number on the end of the movie, that we could get a couple jokes out of here. 7o me... Um, shooting at the barn here. We had to record these guys, we recorded these guys singing in the ballroom of the hotel we were Staying at. About two days, maybe the week before, we actually shot this scene. And, again, Zac's pitch to sing super-high like that, which was so funny. And it's like, the guys, they put the wedding together, all is forgiven. They're actually doing it here. They actually get a sweet little song out to their sister. Singing a very romantic song to their sister, which we'll overlook. They make it about the fact that she's their sister, so that's fine. And to you. To all of us. And then they just, they could taste it and they just had to go too far. They just have to go too far after this. Love you! So sweet. Thought they were gonna blow it. They did not. That's good. This is how we do itt... Also using one of my favorite middle school, high school dance songs to officially end the movie now, which makes me very happy. It's Friday night Oh, you don't throw... Throw it right in her face.

1:26:50 · jump to transcript →

People kept saying, well, just get rid of the plutonium in the beginning. I'm like, no, you have to have Mecca, the Vatican and the Temple Mount. And we came up with the idea of the core as a down payment days before we shot the scene. And that took us to this was when I when I wrote the breakout scene. You were the one that said, remember, in mission, it's always about showing what was supposed to happen. And these scenes, what we call a what if they always happen with narration over them.

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Francis Lawrence

This is what I want you to do. One of the things that I like here, too, that we did, that I tried to do a fair amount, and we did a fair amount... I mean, when you sort of look at the kind of intercutting of the opening sequence, and you look at a sequence like this, and some Stuff later on, was this idea for a bit of pace and momentum to do these intercuts, where you might have a little bit of voiceover that sort of takes us over a series of relatively quick images that allow for a faster passage of time. Then just wait for my signal. This is originally where that scene was, where she was smoking a cigarette. We've repurposed it earlier, and then used a different angle here to hear the music. And that music, interestingly enough, we knew that we were going to be playing music in that apartment, for that scene where she's talking about painting colors. But that was actually Joel Edgerton's idea, to use it as the signal, which I thought was just fantastic, so that you would know it sort of helps link them romantically, because of the scene, the previous scene, it's a very Clear signal that she could hear. But you can see that that obviously comes back at the end, and is very meaningful and very specific. And so for a sound and a piece of music to have so much meaning was really great. And very thankful for Joel coming up with that idea. In one of our initial meetings, when I hired him, he came onto the project, and we had a few conversations, and I think we facetimed a little bit, and went back and forth on some emails about the character. And then we had a little time to sit down before I went off to Budapest, and we Sat in an office for a couple of hours and went through the script, and it was in that that we came up with the idea for the music. Please answer the question. We'd need to know if you're emotionally involved. The answer is no.

1:26:15 · jump to transcript →

Well, we tried to get the real Arthur to be in the movie, but... He's bad at acting? No, it's actually his voice. But he's more of a voiceover actor. Yeah, the dog trainer was like, he's not going to cut it. There's another wonderful joke that we just passed by that I want to flag that sometimes is so low in the mix that some people don't hear it, but he's got hair and all the teeth. I know. That is so funny. That was all you, Jenny. It was so funny. I'm glad. You know, I...

10:49 · jump to transcript →