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00:00We almost have six drafts of the storyboard, the first one being one that was done just
00:25with like paintings of the period so that we have now the record of as the project evolved
00:33first with images that were just taken from symbolist paintings and stuff.
00:39But now what I'm doing is I'm looking at one of these early versions that had just some
00:48imagery that kind of I don't want to lose because when you get on the storyboard level
00:54it's sort of like a coloring book it has the thing of where the people are standing but
01:00it doesn't have any magic of the image whereas this doesn't have where they're standing but
01:05has the magic and somehow it's almost like these are swatches.
01:12This movie and my interpretation of it is going to be like a kind of dark erotic nightmare so
01:18that I want the feel of the movie to be more evocative of dreams and psychology than strictly
01:27speaking just you know reality.
01:34there was a book called dreamers of decadence that has a lot of imagery that we referenced
01:49and were inspired by in particular work by Klimt and that shows up obviously with a lot of the wardrobe.
01:56There was a book called dreamers of decadence that has a lot of imagery that we referenced
02:01and were inspired by in particular work by Klimt and that shows up obviously with a lot of the wardrobe.
02:08These artistic movements influenced and informed the ways that we had of thinking about the imagery
02:21that we were using so it was almost it was almost as if he was saying don't just use these as visual references
02:27become one of these artists try to think the way that these guys thought and let's apply that to the imagery
02:33that we're going to use in the film.
02:50My dad would find things that inspired him and cook up notes that would be passed along
02:55to the storyboard artist and to myself and we would work them into our storyboards and to our planning.
03:02There was a painting by an artist named Kupka an image of a sort of a form that has this kind of epic quality
03:10that was a point of inspiration for the castle and it was very elusive to get that right castle image.
03:19It came together with the help of Peter Ramsey the illustrator to really define it
03:24and Matt World did many of those shots that had the castle and they kind of nailed that weird iconic look that it has.
03:31Yeah. You want to do the Homewood stuff? It's in the script all those little cutaways of Homewood.
03:46He's guarding Lucy and he's drinking his booze. Those will be fun.
03:50I would do maybe a little high angle.
03:54When you make a movie like this with these disparate elements you needed something more than a script.
04:00We needed something that was more a combination of text and dialogue and the actual images.
04:08I come from a composer and a musician's family so we published what we called the score which was like the score that an opera conductor will use when he's doing Man on Lescaux which is a big book that has all the music and all the singing and all the dramatic directions all in one big bible.
04:32Steve we have to get a level.
04:34Steve we have to get a level.
04:35We're ready.
04:36Okay.
04:37Bram Stoker's Dracula.
04:39Columbia logo main title and credits.
04:41We go to an exterior of Constantinople.
04:44A large cross.
04:45Fire illuminates the sky.
04:46We roll the legend.
04:471462.
04:48Muslim Turks led by the Sultan Mohammed.
04:51Actors were brought in.
04:53We had several different readings of the text and slowly this document grew and was built until finally as we were shooting the movie the shots and the scenes were edited on top of it.
05:06So there was an interesting process of growing the movie using references and slowly welding it together out of all these pieces until finally the film was kind of born.
05:20Pale Turks lined up along the road.
05:22His castle in the distance.
05:23Wounds are hungry.
05:24Stop.
05:25How's it sound?
05:27Sounds wonderful.
05:28Sounds good.
05:29Let's go pretty fast.
05:30Very quick.
05:31So what's the problem?
05:32I hit thunder and I got a gunshot.
05:33Yeah you got a gunshot.
05:34And then I hit one of the horses and I got an axe chopping.
05:37So I'm the young guy.
05:40We're just gonna redo this a little bit.
05:42A hand comes in and pulls off the eldest bride.
05:44Dracula appears tremendous over them.
05:47Dark winds around him.
05:49Fire billows from the fireplace so that he looks like the devil himself.
05:53He bends down and grabs the youngest bride and throws her.
05:56Hurling her away like a rag doll.
05:58How dare you touch him when I have forbidden it.
06:01This man belongs to me.
06:03She sticks to the wall like a fly.
06:05She scurries across the ceiling taunting Dracula.
06:08The brides entwine themselves like giant insects and scurry away together.
06:13A director basically when he makes a movie is gathering material.
06:18I sometimes call it you know I'm out there gathering mushrooms.
06:21And I'm not really making the film.
06:23But I'm gathering the mushrooms for this pie I'm gonna make.
06:26And sometimes I have a day I have terrific find a lot of mushrooms.
06:30And sometimes I don't find any.
06:32And sometimes I find some but they're poison mushrooms.
06:35Sometimes I find some and they're magic mushrooms.
06:37And it's only later when you look at all of the stuff you gathered.
06:41That you set about the task of making the film.
06:44A little more like an insect.
06:47Not quite as high maybe.
06:48Living.
06:49Living right.
06:50Where is that one?
06:52Living right now.
06:53During a 25th!
07:16Francis was always asking for ideas ideas, more ideas.
07:20is give me the wildest, most far out things you can.
07:50This was a notion that came from the Cocteau, Beauty and the Beast, which was also one of our references,
08:01that Dracula, when he hears about Mina not wanting to be with him anymore,
08:06gets so anguished that he kind of starts to steam and his emotions take on this sort of physical property.
08:14I would flip him and then, rather than having to sit right next to each other, just bring him around a little.
08:27Slightly facing?
08:28And then slightly facing, and then it would sort of look cheap to that.
08:31Okay.
08:32No problem.
08:33We're always looking for connections.
08:36With a visual layered montage, certain shapes echo one another,
08:41so you have a shape of a glass, and that's a circle, if it's seen from above,
08:45and then naturally you think of what else is circular, and an eyeball is circular,
08:49so you put those two things together.
08:50And those are all ideas that just came about in the process of boarding
08:54and looking for little connections that you can weave together.
08:57A lot of times, Roman knew the technique he wanted to use,
09:09but it would take some back and forth and thinking about it
09:12to see exactly how he was going to achieve it.
09:17Early versions of the opening were real kind of naturalistic and straightforward,
09:22and they never quite seemed to work,
09:24and Francis wanted to bring something more to them.
09:26This was before the idea of the silhouettes really came in,
09:32and one of the issues was, you know, at that time,
09:33we didn't have the fantastic echo design of Dracula's armor,
09:39which kicked things in a whole new direction,
09:41and, you know, we were just drawing them in this lame kind of wolfhead helmet,
09:46and that was kind of like, you know,
09:48we've got to do something to get this onto a different level.
09:51The silhouette idea came up not too long after that.
09:57It was a lot more striking and kind of original.
10:01I always thought of it as a way to kind of start to clue the audience in
10:04as to the visual techniques that he was going to use through the rest of the film,
10:09and sort of to distance the audience from the idea that this was literal reality.
10:14The warrior prince is surrounded by his men.
10:36They realize they are victorious.
10:38He gets off his horse and kneels, removing his wolf helmet.
10:41We see the young face of Dracula.
10:44So the score was pretty instrumental in being, more than anything else,
10:47I think a reference point of knowing what your original intention was.
10:53The different thing about Dracula was that so much of it was about evoking a feeling,
10:59trying to use specific sets of tools.
11:02The visual influences, the theatrical,
11:05there were so many different boxes that we had that we could draw from at any given time,
11:10and it was great because it was, you had really, you had kind of limitless freedom,
11:16but you also had a direction that you knew you were moving in.
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