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00:00:00I've been making films for the big screen for a long time now that's what inspires me
00:00:13creatively as I'm writing the script as I'm thinking about what this is going to be as
00:00:17I'm casting it everything is about that larger-than-life experience that we're
00:00:22intending to give the audience at the end of things
00:00:23you have a set of ideas as a filmmaker that you're working on longer term
00:00:38and they can take decades to come to fruition the time has to be right in all kinds of different ways
00:00:44this film is so complex and ambitious I just don't think he would have been able to pull it off
00:00:4910 years ago it's definitely a product of the many years of experience that we all have at this
00:00:56point I think for me tenor was wanting to get back to a broader sense of filmmaking Dunkirk was a large
00:01:05scale film but it was very very specific to to one time and place without being too reactive to that
00:01:13I wanted to go all around the world again Nathan is a big part of the very early pre-production
00:01:21on the films when Chris is still working on the script fairly early on they'll just go off on
00:01:26scouts I always call them at the beginning of the film we go wandering looking for the film it was
00:01:31just one of those things it's like oh let's just go there see what happens they spend a lot of time
00:01:36walking just absorbing the environments that they see and it's really valuable time because it's that
00:01:42time before Chris has figured out the answers to all the questions and it really does shape the movie
00:01:48it shapes the script Tenet is a classic spy story I grew up loving spy movies particularly the Bond films
00:01:56but to make it sing to today's audiences I sort of felt like for me to really engage with it I wanted
00:02:02to have bigger possibilities I wanted to do it in a way that I was excited about what we did with
00:02:08Inception for the heist genre is really what Tenet attempts to bring to the spy movie genre the film
00:02:16deals with this concept of inversion which is the idea that the entropy of an object or a person indeed
00:02:23could be reversed if this isn't interstellar you know I did have Kip Thorne read the script and he helped
00:02:29me out with some of the concepts but we're not going to make any case for this being scientifically
00:02:32accurate but it is based roughly on on real science every law of physics is symmetrical every
00:02:39law of physics can run forwards or backwards in time and be the same other than entropy that's
00:02:44so the theory being that if you could invert flow entropy you could have an object that the direction of
00:02:50time is is reversed for that object this screenplay is in my entire career the one that I have read more
00:02:58times than any other screenplay Memento was like that and Inception was like that you read the script
00:03:04and they're actually quite hard to pass on the page one of the reasons I kept going back to the script was
00:03:09to enjoy and delight in the fact that so many things paid off it kept yielding the penny dropping on why we
00:03:15were there or why that person was involved the thing that really felt good to me about the script was how
00:03:22fresh it was it just didn't feel like anything I had seen before I think he's dealing with time head
00:03:27on here he's bringing up how we understand physics how we've learned behavior how we love how we hate
00:03:35how we react all of those things due to how time is perceived the thing about a version is it's very
00:03:41much cinematic it's something that you have to see on the screen to fully engage with that's the
00:03:49reason I felt like it would make a compelling movie you could read the screenplay and sort of
00:03:54see where it was going to go but to feel it and actually kind of experience it we have to make the
00:03:59film I didn't want to take on the spy genre unless I felt I could bring something very fresh to it
00:04:09something we talked about a lot at script stage was these characters in fiction they're very often
00:04:13portrayed with real cynicism they're very hard-bitten cynical characters and yet there's a degree of
00:04:19selflessness and self-sacrifice to what they do that speaks to a different set of ethics for me a lot
00:04:26of the inspiration was John David Washington and realizing what he could do with this character I
00:04:32get told by my agents that Christopher Nolan wants to have a meeting with you so I was like I I I didn't
00:04:42think it was real I didn't know what it was about I end up meeting Chris and and then we end up talking
00:04:47for a couple hours last thing he said after that meeting was like well good luck I was like oh
00:04:53that's it I I guess I did terribly his read on the script was immediate and precise he and I both felt
00:05:00that we had the opportunity here to try and create a character with more warmth and generosity as a
00:05:05motivation for going to the extremes and doing the most extreme things but for the greater good the
00:05:10protagonist is a sort of aspirational figure he's suave and he's confident and he's got a certain
00:05:18swagger but he's also got a sort of very accessible humanity you just love him you just love him I do
00:05:27anyway I wasn't trying to be warm or charismatic or anything I'm I'm actually kind of kind of a nerd so
00:05:34but uh jumping into the psyche of somebody like that I think it is inherently just displayed that
00:05:41way because he actually cares JD was the first person that we cast and then we sort of cast the
00:05:49rest of the film around him Michael Caine I'm just like trying to hold it together you know I'm like
00:05:55sitting across from him just like just being character but I found myself watching the performance
00:05:59I'm like I'm just gonna watch for a second seeing him play a scene opposite so Michael it was really a
00:06:07thrill to watch these two play off each other and to watch Michael do what he's done so well for so
00:06:12long Chris went over there and he hugged them after I said that's a rapper Michael Caine it was such a
00:06:17beautiful moment I was I was I was really feeling it and and Doug that it's just lovely to have a little
00:06:22bit of Michael we had Rob Pattinson whose work we've been admiring hugely and in recent
00:06:29years he just has done such uh challenging and interesting work in the last few years in
00:06:35independent films you're looking at this guy who's wanting to challenge himself he's wanting to do
00:06:40things very different I met with Chris we were talking for like three and a half hours still no
00:06:47mention of a project and I was like wait and then I kind of left and then my agent was like um so how
00:06:54was it I don't know I mean he's he's a really nice guy he mentioned a movie at all so maybe it was a
00:07:00really bad meeting it was very important to me that we travel the world with the film because it's
00:07:06about a threat to the entire world entire human race we needed an international cast to continually
00:07:11remind you of that Dimple you know she's very famous in India where film culture is is really
00:07:19amazing I go up to my nephew and I tell him you know I've been offered a Chris Nolan film so he goes
00:07:24aren't you Chris Nolan you like prestige to Chris Nolan I said okay okay chill it might be a crime call
00:07:34you know let's not get our hopes too high the difficulty of casting Priya was very much logistical
00:07:40you know India's just a long way from Hollywood the best way to do it was to just go there and meet
00:07:45you know Dimple uh in person and talk about it and have her you know do a scene for us which she
00:07:51graciously offered to do the highlight was that he had the camera in his hands and that was like a
00:07:57real high point for me okay he's taking the audition I saw Elizabeth Dick Vicki in Widows and I said to
00:08:04Chris you have to see that movie for her because she's just incredible and um he agreed and was like
00:08:10oh yeah let's see if she'll be willing with Kat I feel like Chris wrote a very very strong woman
00:08:16she's an incredibly intelligent person it's very intuitive she can be manipulative if she wants to
00:08:22be she has this kind of dry gallows humor which I loved you know which is was a pleasure to read and
00:08:28in a female character she's certainly someone who's used to getting what she wants in life but she's been
00:08:35held captive by this person Chris Nolan repeatedly told me when we spoke about it first that this guy
00:08:42really was as bad as they get uh an appalling appalling piece of humanity is how he put it
00:08:49it reminds me somewhat of what Heath brought to the Joker when we made the Dark Knight because it
00:08:55really wasn't the type of villain where you get overly concerned with the justifications for the
00:09:00behavior it's really much more about a destructive presence in the world and having to respond to
00:09:05that if we see an Achilles heel in him it's an emotional quality um love I would say for his estranged
00:09:14wife Kat but he is ruthless he is ruthless and he is egotistical and it's truly terrifying inside an
00:09:21intelligent being an intelligent being capable of reckless risk-taking we have to sort of go to some
00:09:28very dark places with these characters so I was very grateful to have Ken as my scene partner because
00:09:33I felt like we both understood the sort of seriousness of the imagery that we were putting on screen he
00:09:40does have a point of view that has a certain logic to it and the interesting thing about what Ken brings
00:09:47to this character is that he makes the character very very difficult to sympathize with it actually makes
00:09:53it quite hard to accept any of the point of view or truth that he might be trying to expand to justify
00:10:00what he's doing because he's so clearly doing everything for the wrong reasons there's something
00:10:06so powerful about belief we've seen these characters Sator and protagonists they both believe that they're
00:10:12right their motivations might differ and obviously the tactics are definitely different but they truly
00:10:17believe in the tenets that they stand on and these themes are highlighted and displayed in this film
00:10:22beautifully through the characters through the writing and what keeps you interested what keeps you
00:10:26invested in the story of what's happening with inversion are the characters
00:10:29this is my third film with Chris you read it and you kind of realize when you read it oh
00:10:51shit how are we going to do this because he's going to want to do this for real
00:10:56we all know that Chris is you know very big on getting everything in camera and and doing things as
00:11:04real as possible you prep a movie with him and set up for it different than any other movie
00:11:09you have to kind of look at every single thing like assume you're doing it until told otherwise
00:11:17this is kind of how we make films it's like if we can build it we do and if it's impossible then we
00:11:22have to rely on our friends of VFX we use visual effects to combine filmed elements as much as
00:11:29possible we're using a minimal approach rather than going full CG I feel like audiences where 20 30 years
00:11:38ago they might have recognized those tricks they're kind of out of practice of seeing them now we're used
00:11:42to just seeing CG wall-to-wall built environments so you can pull the wool over their eyes again by
00:11:47using some of old school tricks I think a lot of what we do is about texture the audience is always
00:11:53aware on some level of the difference between things that are animated and something that's been
00:11:59photographed that has a patina and a texture and a flavor and a taste to things that is unfamiliar to
00:12:05people I think that has an impact long term it's the reason you can keep going back and watch the movie
00:12:10and it doesn't age you know I think all his movies get stronger with time I have to credit being able
00:12:15to shoot the way he shoots every film you're trying to challenge yourself because you're trying to give
00:12:24something new to the audience but you're also trying to advance your techniques in some way you
00:12:29know when you do look at the movies sort of in the the trajectory it does feel like each of them
00:12:34builds on the last it was very obvious that this script was going to be technically very challenging
00:12:41in many ways film storytelling is very sort of linear you know you you you go from a you go to
00:12:47B but in this script people go from B to A as well and sometimes they meet along the way just reversing
00:12:54the film you know that's a trick people are familiar with and it doesn't really quite tell our story the
00:13:00manipulation of time photographically that we needed to engage in it's similarly analogous to
00:13:06the way we approached zero gravity in Inception and Interstellar for example it's using a variety
00:13:12of techniques so that there isn't one particular trick that the audience tunes into and then it
00:13:18starts to feel artificial we use a lot of different techniques to achieve that including a lot of in
00:13:23camera photography performance performing backwards or cars driving backwards the camera running both
00:13:28forwards and backwards depending on the needs of it and also CG to put in the appropriate reaction
00:13:33to the world around we really tried to create something that feels possible plays as plausible to the
00:13:40high and what's happening is actually quite impossible we started the shoot with the scene in the
00:13:50that first week shooting was literally kind of preschool I've never had any job where so many of the
00:14:08finest professionals in the world at what they do would show up on a given day and honest to God they
00:14:15didn't have it right what's happening in that scene that's no slur that's no calling anybody it's just
00:14:21that complicated and that different from movies that came before it was a baptism by fire for sure that
00:14:30first week was was tough you know it was really tough but it truly did set the tone Chris was very happy
00:14:38with it the dailies looked fantastic so it was a real morale boosting way to start such a huge adventure
00:14:45it's a testament to the skill of the different department heads that each technique that was at our
00:14:51disposal tended to work equally well and so on a case-by-case basis every shot of every sequence we had
00:15:00to decide which technique to apply to a given shot to achieve the appropriate narrative effect the camera
00:15:13literally sees time before the motion picture camera exists there's no way for people to conceive of slow
00:15:21motion or reverse motion cinema itself is the window onto time that allows this project to come to
00:15:31fruition it's it's literally a project that only exists because the movie camera exists so the jumping
00:15:37off point for how you visualize these things is reversing the film in the camera
00:15:41with Chris it's always an in-camera approach by limiting yourself by doing everything in camera
00:15:50you always keep connected to reality and also the physics of reality every film that we make we
00:15:58sort of move further in the direction of making IMAX cameras be a part of our package in the same way
00:16:05that any other camera would be at this point they're sort of the workhorse for us it has this
00:16:10extraordinary strength of power in terms of how deeply it can take the audience into the story it's a
00:16:17very imposing camera feels very important when you're shooting something on IMAX there's a nice
00:16:22pressure to it everyone is very precious about the film you have to change the mag of film every few
00:16:30minutes so every take is a lot of time afterwards it kind of makes you bring your a-game pretty quickly
00:16:38people always talk about IMAX oh it's big for me it's also something else it's a way of looking at
00:16:45imagery and story that is not only supposed to connect with you in an intellectual way but also
00:16:51in a visceral way you have to feel it and that is something that the big format very much does for me
00:16:57we had two 65 millimeter cameras from Panavision we shot most of our dialogue sequences with those cameras
00:17:04and our big action sequences we'd shoot with IMAX we used more cameras and shot more 65 millimeter
00:17:11negative than I think any projects ever shot and it totaled up to this point close to a million and a
00:17:17half feet this is pretty pretty impressive we wanted to not only shoot IMAX this time but we we wanted the
00:17:24IMAX cameras to run backwards this was challenging IMAX cameras for as far as I I know has never really
00:17:32run backwards and definitely not for production like this IMAX was very helpful to start a new
00:17:39engineering project with us and rebuild mechanics in their magazines and in the cameras to enable us
00:17:46to shoot backwards because of it we've had to rethink a lot of things about how you load mags how you make
00:17:52the camera electronics work in reversal all that stuff when we're shooting you know sometimes you work
00:17:57with a backwards Mac sometimes you work with a forwards Mac then you should definitely mix those up because
00:18:03the disastrous things will happen Hoyter with his engineering brain because he has a wonderful
00:18:08engineering brain as well as a great photographic eye he's always looking for and coming up with ways to
00:18:13break down the barriers between where the camera can go and where the actors want to be and on this film
00:18:18he and his team were able to get the camera absolutely everywhere that that I could possibly want and
00:18:23conceive of we use the edge arm for the vehicle chase sequences we also had the edge arm on boats we
00:18:32shot aerial steadicam handheld a lot of handheld that that Hoyter loves doing he is athletic you know
00:18:40these IMAX cameras are heavy they're not light he's like in there with us there was a take where I was
00:18:47fighting and I kicked him once I was like oh it was like no no keep going keep going I was like I kicked
00:18:55the DP and he's totally with it Chris and I and and the core crew and we are there and we are on those
00:19:03freaking boats and we try to be as close as possible I think some of that love he has for film in this
00:19:11process and connecting with with the people he works with is in how he sets his lighting in how he finds
00:19:16things with the camera in how he's able to find the strength to carry that bad boy and run with
00:19:22me or or move when I move more than any other project that this is just for me every day learning
00:19:29learning learning learning that is very gratifying in itself it's by far by far the most complex thing
00:19:36that I've ever shot not necessarily in terms of pure direction but but in in terms of the concept of it
00:19:44and in terms of how we wanted to lead people through the story it's a huge challenge
00:19:49where you're seeing a sequence more once or from more than one point of view we wanted to never just
00:19:59simply reverse the film we wanted to create a new sequence and make fresh choices about how to shoot
00:20:05it what perspective to shoot it from we would say okay so we're seeing this from the protagonist point
00:20:12of view which protagonist how do we want the earlier protagonist to experience the later protagonist and
00:20:21if you follow a very complicated line with stuff happening and going backwards and forwards suddenly
00:20:28becomes very important how you as an as a viewer are let through that story there's something very
00:20:37particular to this approach to time and the mixing of directions of time that render it really really
00:20:46difficult or impossible to intuit it therefore becomes a film as much easier to watch than it was to make
00:20:51there's nothing simple about a Chris Nolan movie we as the crew have to just jump in with with both
00:20:59our feet it's just not as simple as forwards and backwards it's the interaction and combination of
00:21:05things going backwards and forwards and going backwards also means backwards in time when all
00:21:11that's implied in that you needed a roadmap as it were to get through this movie so what visual effects
00:21:18does often on a lot of films is is get involved with previous and quite often that previous is what
00:21:24I like to call technical previous it's more like GPS map if you like of the entire sequence and all the
00:21:33different elements coming to play on this film it became obvious fairly quickly that that was going to
00:21:39be a really useful thing in fact so much so that I felt like that was going to be all I would do
00:21:44Andrew Jackson is one of my favorite official effect supervisors for a very simple reason that he
00:21:52doesn't see his job starting the moment you wrapped even though he's the visual effects guy he just has
00:21:58ideas and suggestions that are going to help us get you know more creative stuff as opposed to like
00:22:03just saying hey we're going to do this all visual effects I mean Andrew Jackson gets every piece of
00:22:09information as he always does in all our films and then we just use what is necessary to a minimum so
00:22:17you're not trying to fake something into the shot I brought Bodhi in so that he could focus 100% on
00:22:23previous and I could go back to actually supervising all of the visual effects which is my job the fact
00:22:29that you had someone dedicated on the movie to just explaining what the hell's going on indicates what
00:22:35kind of movie this was throughout every kind of setup in the whole film uh the forwards and backward had to
00:22:41work is there there are parts of this film where there are at least four of the same person at least at
00:22:47this at any one moment in time continuity in every film is important I try to put every scene into a day or
00:22:56a night and then just go chronologically through the story however something that happens here may also
00:23:05happen here but in reverse so later in the movie they're watching the same event but from a different
00:23:13perspective the previous became the only way that you can actually see the timelines in both directions
00:23:23at the same time and to explain to people quickly when you needed to so much of its visual like actually
00:23:30seeing it you're like that makes absolute sense yes that's absolutely how it should be done it was
00:23:37really a great tool but to imagine that you'd open it up take a look go oh that explains everything that
00:23:45was not the case the Joe concept became that you know we'd ask him a question about the car chase does
00:23:50this happen before this you know whatever the first answer would always be wrong it was striking the
00:23:56degree to which your instinct would tell you something and you'd be absolutely convinced of
00:24:00it and then after really puzzling it through and looking at the sequence and looking at it objectively
00:24:05you realize that you'd started with a misapprehension I've never worked on a film before where I've seen
00:24:12so many people discussing the intricacies of the plot at length and debating oh what about if this
00:24:19happened it took a village in a way for everybody to keep everybody honest that never got any easier
00:24:32and that's that's unique to this film but that continually reinforced my passion about the concept
00:24:40and my interest in the concept because it was felt like something that not until it's finished not until
00:24:44you experience it do you fully understand it and that was an exciting thing to be involved in
00:24:49it was all very well and good for us to struggle with the concept but to struggle with the action
00:24:56one of my first thoughts upon finishing the script was this is going to be the toughest stunt coordinator
00:25:02job George Cottle ever had it was my first real meeting with the other HODs Chris was talking to me
00:25:10about how he thinks would be the best way to first approach it and I was like okay so he's like so
00:25:15you should put a fight together of one guy fighting another guy moving forward and then play that
00:25:21backwards and also okay so I'm kind of making my notes and I'm like okay so fight forward and play it
00:25:25backwards then take the other guy away and have the guy who was first attacking watch the video of him
00:25:33doing it backwards then have him do the routine perfectly backwards then have somebody attack him
00:25:41as he's going backwards and I'm like okay attack him as he's going backwards and then flip that film
00:25:49and that's your fight scene and at that point I just stopped writing and kind of looked up and
00:25:55everybody at the table started laughing and even Chris was like I lost you didn't I and I'm like you did
00:26:00yeah you did in writing the script obviously I had to visualize a lot of the things uh and give
00:26:07it my best guess as to how it was going to feel how it was going to work but as far as the specifics
00:26:13of what's that actually going to look like until George and his guys started seeing what looked good
00:26:19this way that way it really wasn't possible to know
00:26:21I had a team of four stunt guys and a couple of stunt riggers and we just started coming up with
00:26:30very simple moves to see what it looked like forwards and backwards
00:26:34the end of every week I'd put it all together and I'd sit with Chris and he'd be like
00:26:40I like this I don't like this oh that works well
00:26:43the first thing we learned is that if you have such skill stunt performers as we did they can
00:26:52perform things forwards and backwards so they look the same I encourage George and his team to look
00:26:57off the world of dance dance choreography things like that really think outside the box we brought
00:27:01in somebody who was amazing and like the move on the floor where he's going all crazy and going for
00:27:07the gun that was something that she come up with and we showed it to Chris and he's like I love that
00:27:11that's that we need to that needs to be in there the training was paramount nobody's ever thrown an
00:27:17inverted punch before so how does how do you make that real life you know every rehearsal we did with
00:27:24actors we would video it because there'll be times where they would do a fight or a move or even just a
00:27:30simple run backwards and they're like oh my god that looks stupid it's actually the most I've ever
00:27:34looked at playback because I had to just for mechanical purposes you needed to have that reassurance
00:27:41on hand and be like no look that's that's pretty good they're like oh great okay perfect
00:27:47even the stunt guys found it tough they worked a long time to get to that level and then we only
00:27:53get the actors for three or four weeks to get them to that same level I take my hats off to them they
00:27:59did a they did a fantastic job
00:28:01the film was incredibly demanding for all the actors having to figure out acting backwards talking
00:28:13backwards for fights for running and yes for speaking yeah Sato has a Russian accent and to speak
00:28:21in reverse in a Russian accent at pace at length while fighting and walking backwards is unquestionably
00:28:27a challenging thing for an actor to do I feel like speaking backwards with a Russian accent now will
00:28:34become like new actor code for like but have you done your homework can you speak backwards in a Russian
00:28:38accent it was so many days of like stop hold it let's talk about this before we do it again
00:28:45JD Washington was great because he came to play
00:28:48I asked for my hot sauce an hour ago you know he was a professional football player and we didn't
00:28:53break him but we definitely pushed him to his limit
00:28:56the first week was all the vault fight and it was intense
00:29:02ultimately JD has to learn that fight in four different variations forwards as the protagonist in
00:29:12current time in the suit we also shot that in reverse then in the antagonist suit coming out of the
00:29:20machine and he has to do that whole fight forward and he has to do that whole fight backwards when you
00:29:25watch the film it just plays so seamlessly you don't realize how much time and effort went into putting
00:29:32the pieces together I was insane I was like you know it was a different demand a different ask as an
00:29:39actor which I you know thoroughly enjoy but I was kind of stressful because you want to you want to get it
00:29:45right the thing about physically talented performers is you you want to get a gauge on what they can do
00:29:54themselves because if you have an absolute divide between what the actor can do and then what the
00:30:00stunt performer can do if the actors only really you know walking and talking every time he breaks to
00:30:04a run you have to get someone else in it's pretty limiting in terms of how you shoot things every movie
00:30:09we've ever done the actors always talk a big game you know they always want to do their own stunts
00:30:14this was an amazing group of actors because they all not only talked a good game but they gave a
00:30:20good game too on a warm evening in Mumbai we had a couple of shots to get where we're getting bungeed
00:30:26up onto a building Rob and I had to do that first part of it JD and Rob showed up and they're like
00:30:32what have you got us into now and we walked them to the top of the building and they were like okay well
00:30:36let me show me one so I got their doubles showed them the little thing and they were like okay all right
00:30:40I think that's the one of the benefits of being so exhausted he does don't have any energy to be
00:30:45terrified that I wasn't nervous about that was just fun I felt like a roller coaster I love
00:30:52roller coasters but the jumping off that was scary I was like Chris do you want to hang a platform and
00:30:58have JD jump off so you get that moment he's like great fantastic it was 10 foot wide by eight foot when
00:31:05you hang that over the building 250 feet in the air it looks like a postage stamp John Davis who'd gone
00:31:12out through everything with the stunt guys and the harnesses and the safety and where the platform was
00:31:16and all that stuff done so then I'm talking to him about performance Chris was giving me some notes
00:31:21because I say a line I gotta do some things before I jump off and I'm always sharp I'm usually on it
00:31:26and I kept I just hit him with the here okay okay but I wasn't taken to the note to me it just felt like
00:31:32he had a different idea about how he wanted to play the scene and he was sticking to that he realized
00:31:37when I finally got it like after take seven or something he started laughing to himself and he
00:31:41told me oh I realized you were scared shitless I was like yes Chris I was I was so scared he was
00:31:49terrified about being asked to jump off a skyscraper you know like fair enough
00:31:53Rob Pattinson had to do an incredible amount of driving he's a very self-deprecating sort of guy Rob
00:32:05he sort of pretends as though he can barely drive I think I did one day of training of driving
00:32:12backwards made my teacher feel so sick he had to stop and so I assumed all right that's next my driving
00:32:19for the movie the stunt team did an evaluation on him and they were really impressed and so he
00:32:24ended up doing a lot of his own driving
00:32:26we've done very large-scale car action in the past my interest in revisiting it was well what happens if
00:32:42you can turn on its head look at it in a different way you're challenging everybody involved to come
00:32:49up with ways of making this fresh and making it new when we started seeing some ideas for the car
00:32:56flip you know we've all seen cars flip hundreds of times the key for us again was the flip had to make
00:33:02sense forwards and it had to make sense backwards it was another case of we're gonna just have to do
00:33:08this Scott Fisher and his incredible effects team started building these cars and turning
00:33:13the drive train round so we could drive them a high speed backwards the first time we did it it just
00:33:22blew everybody's mind to watch that happening in reverse it just looked incredible traveling to Estonia
00:33:31and putting those pieces together we were we were ready to go those guys over there started setting up
00:33:36all the actual vehicles for the movie with the same kind of stuff that we had tested this vehicle we
00:33:43see flipping on the road what you can see here is a special effects rig a cannon that's used to flip
00:33:52the vehicle they did a great job like getting all that stuff done and testing them and making sure
00:33:57they're safe to operate through that whole thing because once we start there you were on the freeway for
00:34:02you know almost two weeks straight of non-stop car stuff
00:34:06shooting in the day you have the problem of where you're gonna find a road that that city is able
00:34:15to let you shut it down for weeks at a time the city of uh Tallinn and Estonia was kind enough to
00:34:22give us a great big long stretch of highway for much of the day that was a first for me like when will
00:34:28we ever be able to do this in life you know to shut down the whole entire freeway we knew early on that
00:34:34we would be doing a lot of pod work it's basically you know the little cabin of a driving seat pedals
00:34:39and a steering wheel we knew with the cars going forwards and backwards that we would need the pods
00:34:44to be able to be inside the vehicle for when they're going backwards so the guy can hide and we'd also need
00:34:50it on the roof so we could then shoot inside at any angle anywhere Chris wanted to be with the IMAX
00:34:55camera the stunt drivers have known and worked with each other for decades so the guys just had
00:35:03it so dialed in much like earlier with the fighting and almost being a dance it was so similar in the way
00:35:10with the vehicles in going to Tallinn where Hollywood production had never been before there was an
00:35:19excitement and enthusiasm to help us out and to really show that you could do something on a grand
00:35:24scale there it's hard to imagine that that being possible in any other city really
00:35:32well Chris always envisioned this film as a sort of globe-trotting action epic and obviously the best
00:35:46way to do that is to actually travel yourself in spy films in particular I think one of the reasons that
00:35:54we're so drawn to the genre is escapism and is the idea of these characters who get to live in a world
00:36:01but we don't get to live in yes you could recreate India in a sound stage or London in a sound stage
00:36:09and you're not going to capture the essence or the authenticity being able to go to seven different
00:36:15countries gives it such a nuanced sense of realism because you're actually there what you saw is what
00:36:21what we experienced prep on this film was really complicated because we were based out of
00:36:31LA and making plans for all these huge action set pieces that were going to be happening all over the
00:36:37world we were going places during the busiest times summer in Amalfi you know monsoon season in India
00:36:47we basically had to make sure that we had the best people on the ground in every country and we
00:36:53certainly did Chris wanted this kind of brutalist you know Eastern Bloc vibe that we got from Tallinn it's
00:37:00just phenomenal I mean it's got very vibrant culture has all kinds of interesting Soviet era bits of
00:37:07architecture as we prep the film we put more and more things into Tallinn we shot the concert sequence
00:37:14it was there at Lenin hall it was built for the Soviet Union's 1980 Olympics it's brutalist architecture and it sits out overlooking the Baltic Sea
00:37:26actually I think it's one of my favorite buildings we've ever shot in you know in the end what you see as an audience is a fragment or is a shot but you are filming a reality you know you you want to buy into that reality
00:37:39when you send in a SWAT team or when you send in actors you know you want them to understand the sort of overall architecture of a place so in that way relocation always helps a lot
00:37:53India is a great place to shoot but it had its challenges you know shooting at night in moonsoon seasons where it's very very wet over a big area that we needed to
00:38:08light up this was very challenging coming here and putting it all together and putting it in such a massive way everybody's just gobsmacked at what he's doing out here it's absolutely awesome
00:38:21the building sequence we shot in a building called the Vardam building there are only two little elevators in there that would sometimes stop or just not come for no reason and so you would make the decision am I going to walk up the 18 floors or not
00:38:34the Indian people that we worked with they were just very very good and hard-working people that knew exactly what needed to be done and that made stuff happen for us
00:38:44we were able to get some really remarkable images including some of the first aerials in a film of Mumbai ever it's not something they'd allowed in the past
00:38:53crucial plot elements happen in quite unusual places in the movie I mean who knew there was an enormous wind farm in the middle of the ocean just off the coast of Denmark
00:39:07before a shot Dunkirk was traveling with my family and I saw this wind farm from a plane and I wrote it down and followed away shooting Dunkirk we were right next to an offshore wind farm and some of the only visual effects we really had to do in Dunkirk were erasing the windmills from the shots
00:39:25and it was a bit a bit of a shame because they looked fantastic and so that kind of cemented the visual potential for me as I go I really want to shoot one of these offshore wind farms
00:39:33one of the things that we had done on Dunkirk was we had shot a lot of boat scenes
00:39:39any time you're shooting with boats and working on the water it's incredibly difficult
00:39:45I don't think I ever would have wanted to try something like shooting out of the wind farm on the icebreaker if we hadn't done Dunkirk
00:39:55a lot of the challenge for us was finding these ships their availability for the times we needed them and then finding out how we were going to effectively shoot them
00:40:05the icebreaker for me stood out right away because it was so unusual and the paint scheme is so unusual and because you know these boats work
00:40:13the boats not sitting around waiting for someone to call it up to work on a movie
00:40:16so to find our icebreaker that that had this kind of look to it and then to get the boat to work during the times we need it was really awesome
00:40:24Dunkirk had been I mean really one of the largest marine units ever assembled for a movie and having done that with Neil
00:40:31I thought this job would be relatively easy for him but but the reality is when you start riding in you know luxury yachts and icebreakers
00:40:39it gradually started to add up we had 120 ships on this movie which is staggering and you know more than half of those were on camera
00:40:49when it came to picking our mega yacht we had a lot of options
00:40:52a lot of these boats exist but generally the owned by people aren't that interested in letting you let you rent them
00:40:58a lot of them are meant for cruising the coast and sitting at the beach and Planet Nine which we ended up going with was very utilitarian
00:41:06this boat meant business it is literally a world travel machine it's got an ice rated hull that can go anywhere in the Antarctic
00:41:15I gave it a very slightly militaristic aspect it feels defensive it doesn't feel like a toy it feels like it has a functional purpose
00:41:25the Moppy coast at that time a year it was almost impossible get around by car we would move the crew starting at 3 a.m.
00:41:33out to the yacht to work all day food water anything that was needed film everything came by shuttle and by boat
00:41:39this is the first time Planet Nine's been involved in this kind of thing normally a yacht only takes 12 guests
00:41:45uh and here we are out to anchor with a hundred of you on board so you know it's been a pretty amazing
00:41:52very very different experience for us the real challenge of filming on a luxury yacht like that is
00:41:58everything on that boat is finished to this extraordinarily expensive and high degree it was a bit like shooting in a museum
00:42:05you know a china shop everything here is custom the furniture is built inside the ship the wallpaper the lighting the carpets
00:42:12doorways are really narrow in a boat and the furniture is very large
00:42:19this is to protect the woodwork from us we had to protect the doors and the walls because they're fabric or leather
00:42:27right now we're preparing for a scene where we're going to bring MI-8 military helicopter and perform some operations on this deck
00:42:35we're expecting downdraft speeds of almost 100 miles an hour which is really substantial as a basic leave a class 2 hurricane
00:42:41well the helicopter is too heavy to land on the deck of the yacht the yacht has its own helicopter that can land which is very very small in comparison
00:42:51I mean it was massive those things are supposed to land on an aircraft carrier not on a mega yacht
00:42:55and so in the end through tests and rehearsals they ascertain that they could just touch down the deck and low enough for people to get in and out
00:43:03no one absolutely nobody has pulled that off before and I don't think you'll ever see that again
00:43:10of course in in the films very quick things free throwaway thing but that's the nature of this type of filmmaking
00:43:16you know this is a real yacht this is this is how a character like sexual might live
00:43:20to be on these boats is to get a strong sense of character which is manifest in these incredible vessels that either keep him castle like
00:43:28um Neptune like on the sea um repelling all invaders or cutting through his environment in this deadly sort of shark like high velocity way
00:43:41there's definitely a level of casting that goes on with these ships and especially for Sager's character
00:43:50the yacht you know his personal racing sailboats somebody of that caliber is going to have the best
00:43:56what I was looking for in the script was that bridge between the glamorous frivolous world yachts
00:44:02adds something with physicality and danger
00:44:07the F-50s it's the baddest sailing craft on the water it's a rocket ship
00:44:13they were quite terrifying actually you sort of go yeah yeah I know it's going to lift off the water
00:44:17and then the first time it did I went holy hell like it's so it goes it goes really incredibly high up
00:44:24I made a few calls to some guys I knew that that had sailed previously in America's Cup
00:44:28and it turned out that some of those guys were now these professional sailors on the SailGP circuit
00:44:34which is basically like Formula One but for sailboats
00:44:38when we first started talking to SailGP we wanted to get them to Amalfi because we were already there
00:44:42we said all right well we'll go to you guys when you guys go to South Hampton
00:44:46these boats just can't travel it's a big deal to get these boats to move and just to get them in and out of the water is the whole process
00:44:53they come in they set up these big tent cities they've got they unpack their boats that they have in containers
00:44:57imagine a boat that really doesn't want to float and that's kind of what you're dealing with this boat wants to fly
00:45:03so you put it in the water when you use it you take it out of the water you don't want to use it
00:45:08obviously the SailGP guys had never done anything like this had never been asked to do anything like this
00:45:13I don't think sailing at this level has been in a feature film ever so this is the first
00:45:18it's also been a learning curve trying to you know film these so I think all of us have learned from both sides
00:45:25it was a meeting of these two crazy worlds you know like a film crew meeting a you know a traveling
00:45:33circus of the world's best athletes and the fastest boats on the ocean like throwing people off of one
00:45:42of their boats is just their idea of a nightmare it's like no you can't throw somebody off the boat
00:45:47so no no no but that's what we need to do in yeah but he can't fall off the boat it's like well no
00:45:51that's what we need him to do there's a whole extraordinary set of safety protocols that we
00:45:55needed to know how to do and the actors needed to know how to do it so we all went through that safety
00:46:00training before we were allowed to get anywhere near the boat
00:46:03kind of for the first time in the shoot we as a film crew we are very much subjected to what is possible with these boats
00:46:11the fact that these things go 50 knots anything that you have on the water that can keep up that fast
00:46:18isn't going to be stable enough for any kind of camera platform
00:46:21the real breakthrough was to have Andrew Jackson go a week early to work with CLGP and look at camera placements
00:46:34we were able to do things with these boats that they had never done before just because they'd never
00:46:40had to and no one had ever tried we were able to remove the wing and tow the boat and get it up on the
00:46:46foils which is very stable and very safe that was a scenario where it was safe to involve the actors and
00:46:51be able to photograph them actually foiling actually lifting off the water we knew we were going to have to
00:46:59do some of the secrets you know on this this other vehicle the buck rig was a supplement basically half
00:47:04of the ship bolted on to a real powerboat it was really just for close-up stuff and for dialogue in
00:47:12the end it all paid off it all works actually very smoothly and we were able to get the secrets in a
00:47:17relatively short amount of time
00:47:22I think Chris is unique in that he can look at things like enormous boats and just the quality of the
00:47:28the quality of light in a place like Amalfi and do something magical at the service of a story that
00:47:34goes for his sweet spot which is how do you make great cinema not just tell stories in pictures but
00:47:41how do you make the experience of cinema to be actually in the thing to feel the thing physically move
00:47:49around you or feel the boat rock under you it just obviously organically feeds the truth of a performance
00:47:57a lot of these sequences are you going to read in the script and you just think yeah would be cool in a movie
00:48:04and then you get to set and say yeah we got a 747 or crashing into a building that's how we're achieving
00:48:10the 747 crashing into a building writing the plane crash I knew I wanted to try and do it in some ways in camera
00:48:17It read on the page as the most exciting sequence and I definitely was scratching my head about how we were going to achieve it
00:48:27One of the first things I asked Chris was you know how big do you want the plane he laughed and I said I think I can get you a real plane
00:48:34We wound up visiting an airport in Victorville where they have all kinds of planes that are being sold for scrap
00:48:41When I looked at 737s they looked a bit small compared to the 747s and the MD-11s I was seeing on the other side
00:48:49It's like well maybe we could just go shopping there instead
00:48:53When we first talked about crashing the plane in I thought maybe a you know Cessna maybe a 707 something kind of small but we went all out 747
00:49:05almost 300,000 pounds
00:49:08To see a plane like this actually kind of makes you realize what we're all flying in when we're when we're flying these things are huge
00:49:14I don't think we tend to get the scale of it when we're just kind of walking in through the gangplank
00:49:18Our main focus when we got there was the brakes of course that's the part they take off right away when a plane is decommissioned
00:49:26Here's a finished bogey with the with four of our eight brakes we have four on this side four on the other side
00:49:32These are rebuilt real-deal calipers from Boeing
00:49:36The same system we use to remote drive cars right with pods
00:49:41You basically put that stuck it in the belly of the plane and one guy steered one guy dealt with the braking
00:49:46And we held it by pulling it on cables
00:49:49So this is our cockpit there's no nobody up above obviously and we drive we steer from here
00:49:55Braking systems here on the right
00:49:57We have a couple cameras facing forward back ones we can see the position of the wheel at all times
00:50:02We actually have several different views we can switch between so we can see forward we can see backwards
00:50:07A couple of the shots involved guys climbing out of the escape hole and they're kind of near the wheels and stuff
00:50:12So we want to be ready for any kind of a emergency or panic stop
00:50:15There was an enormous amount of prep that went into that sequence because we were shooting at a working airport
00:50:21And they're not traditionally you know in the business of crashing planes for real
00:50:29From a safety point of view we made sure that everything was good
00:50:32You know just working with Scott Fisher and his team making sure that we knew all of our parameters for safety
00:50:39There were sections you know we had to go through the cars stop go through the guy unloading
00:50:49Blowing this stuff out the back
00:50:51Dropping the gold out
00:50:53That's the thing on Chris's movies you do it it works you move on
00:50:58Yeah I think I'll enjoy it more when I see the movie
00:51:05I was like how are they gonna pull this off
00:51:07Like there's no way they're gonna crash this thing into that building
00:51:11It's still a damn 747 okay
00:51:14It's it's really a big object
00:51:17Chris and myself and we were very much one camera at the time people
00:51:22Of course if we blow something up and you can only blow it once
00:51:26We would shoot with several cameras
00:51:28We have so many cameras you're not gonna be able to watch this
00:51:31And not potentially photographed so
00:51:34Wait for the movie to come out next year okay
00:51:36We'll see you next year okay
00:51:48Over to you guys
00:51:50Go to the camera
00:51:52Go to the camera
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00:53:27He's on the border of James Bond.
00:53:29He's secret, yet he's out there.
00:53:31All those things come into play
00:53:33when you dress a person like that.
00:53:35And I came up with a very good iconic look
00:53:37that works for J.D. and works for the movie.
00:53:39I didn't feel like I had to think about it.
00:53:41They just felt so a part of me, part of the character.
00:53:43But I felt sexy, to be honest.
00:53:45The polo shirt has turned into our quote-unquote iconic look.
00:53:49It has a great deal of strength,
00:53:51yet it doesn't overpower you with the tie and the shirt.
00:53:54There's something slightly relaxed and a lot of confidence,
00:53:58you know, and on J.D., it looks great.
00:54:05Neil is kind of a slob.
00:54:06He just kind of rolls in every day and doing what he does.
00:54:10I kind of thought that Neil's the type of person
00:54:13who appreciates chaos.
00:54:15I felt like he couldn't take himself too seriously.
00:54:19His first suit that you see him in in India
00:54:21is this linen suit where you see...
00:54:23It's just been aged and worn down as if he's never cleaned it.
00:54:27It's just like he wears it every day.
00:54:29And that's the real Neil.
00:54:31He's got this skinny little tie that he ties like a schoolboy.
00:54:34But then when he goes posing as a wealthy businessman,
00:54:38he takes on a different persona.
00:54:40Yet a little bit of Neil still peeks through.
00:54:42So you've got a double-breasted suit,
00:54:43which is perfectly tailored and everything.
00:54:45But if you look at the fabric, there's a little playfulness to it.
00:54:47So that character is still there,
00:54:49even though he's pretending to be somebody else.
00:54:53With Satyr, you could go so many ways with that character.
00:54:56You see, you hear Russian oligarch and you think,
00:54:58oh, wealth, lots of, you know, lots of money.
00:55:01Or you have a guy who says, I'm so wealthy, I don't care.
00:55:05It gave you a clue to the inside of the mind of this character
00:55:08and how he feels about the world, how he reacts to the world.
00:55:11The original designs for him were more over the top.
00:55:15Whereas after serious discussion with Chris,
00:55:18he took it all down to a much lower level,
00:55:20which works for the character.
00:55:22It makes him very individual to who he is.
00:55:27Kat's journey in the film varies from these moments of great strength
00:55:32to fragility to softness.
00:55:34She's very conservative.
00:55:36You could easily go very, you know, Russian oligarch's wife.
00:55:39You could go extremely, you know, designer.
00:55:41But because she isn't that person, the marriage has fallen apart.
00:55:45She does not love this man anymore.
00:55:47She's not in that world.
00:55:48She comes from a stately place.
00:55:50So we kind of kept her that way.
00:55:52When you watched Elizabeth, she has such graceful movements,
00:55:56like almost balletic.
00:55:57I thought, here I have a six foot three actress.
00:56:00My feeling was to just own it.
00:56:02And I said to Chris, I think we should just go with it.
00:56:05So I made the clothes flatter that physicality of her.
00:56:09The wardrobe of this type of film was always going to be very important to me.
00:56:13And Jeffrey has an excellent sensibility for combining something with a bit of glamour,
00:56:19something with that little extra aspirational quality almost,
00:56:23but with an idea of how that can be reconciled with the real world texture that we're trying to get across.
00:56:33I think part of the success of what the movies look like is Nathan.
00:56:41Nathan and I have a shared North London background.
00:56:44We speak that same language of industrial design from our childhoods.
00:56:48He's been with Chris a long time.
00:56:50Their synergy is just top notch.
00:56:52Traditionally, our methods are always, you try and find something real and shoot it
00:56:56and then use a little bit on stage.
00:56:58Nothing new, it's old techniques.
00:57:00So it just grows the scale of the whole place.
00:57:03To make the audience believe, you have to make the sort of futurism of it believable.
00:57:08And therefore, you have to make it familiar.
00:57:11It's like something that you feel that could exist.
00:57:14And for art departments, and I'm sure for Chris as well,
00:57:17it's just more fun to build the stuff.
00:57:21Nathan has that talent for building things that you instantly believe in.
00:57:27They're visceral. They feel like real places.
00:57:31The first time you read this script, you have a lot of questions,
00:57:34not the least of which are turnstile.
00:57:37Uh, how does that work?
00:57:45We wanted to integrate the process of inversion
00:57:48into the texture and the tone of the rest of the film.
00:57:54The idea of the two rotating things was something that Nathan came up with
00:57:58in terms of how to mirror things, how to make it look like a reflection
00:58:01at the same time as actually a unique half of what's going on.
00:58:05There's an evolution of those turnstiles.
00:58:07So they'd start off small, and they keep getting bigger.
00:58:10The early ones start off as two cylinders that kind of rotate,
00:58:13and you're able to transfer across.
00:58:15And then the next one's bigger.
00:58:17Same idea, but you're able to transfer across something really large.
00:58:20Then they look more like a slot machine and go round and round vertically.
00:58:24We could stop them and start them and change the speed and the pacing
00:58:27depending upon what was needed for the shot.
00:58:36We try on every film to do things in camera as far as possible.
00:58:41We've sort of honed it down into using scale tricks
00:58:45so we don't have to build so big,
00:58:47and we can deceive the eye with our false perspectives.
00:58:51For example, in Barbara's office, you're able to fool people
00:58:55because you have the real set, and then at a certain point
00:58:58it fades into painting.
00:59:00They brought in a painter from England who did it freehand.
00:59:04You're like, oh!
00:59:06What you're doing is putting three dimensions
00:59:08on a two-dimensional surface
00:59:10in order to give the impression that it's one continual plane.
00:59:17For the final battle sequence,
00:59:19the scale of that set alone was just immense.
00:59:23There was a mine just behind Joshua Tree, Eagle Mountain,
00:59:27100-year-old mine,
00:59:29and it had the core batch of existing ruined architecture.
00:59:33where we could really develop that side
00:59:36and twist it into what we wanted.
00:59:39There were a few existing buildings.
00:59:41In the model, the ones that were existing
00:59:43are represented in the light gray.
00:59:45All the dark gray are buildings that we built.
00:59:49We've created some miniature buildings
00:59:51that are 30 or 50% of what a full-size building would be.
00:59:55This building here is about 50% of full-size,
00:59:58and it just extends the city even further than what we've done.
01:00:01When we got into the cave sequence where they enter the cave,
01:00:06it had to tie into our Eagle Mountain set.
01:00:08That cave was amazing.
01:00:10That was mind-boggling.
01:00:11We're at stage 16 at Warner Brothers.
01:00:14This is the largest stage in Hollywood in terms of volume.
01:00:18This is the link piece to Eagle Mountain.
01:00:23We've built a few caves in our time,
01:00:25and we've learned over the years
01:00:27how to achieve that grand scale
01:00:29so you feel it's big, but it's an illusion.
01:00:32What you're looking at down the end is a forced perspective,
01:00:34so it looks like it goes on forever, but it doesn't.
01:00:37So as we come in, you know, this perspective now is all forced.
01:00:41So it's like, you know, Alice in Wonderland.
01:00:44So here we go, let's see.
01:00:46So there, you know, we just scaled these down, 3D printed them,
01:00:49you know, and then Ed Strang, our scenic,
01:00:52just painted a little backing to make it go even further.
01:00:55So now we come out into the main cave.
01:01:00This is now the hyper center.
01:01:02We've used fiberglass molds, foam carving,
01:01:06and then as we get higher, we've used lightweight vacuform
01:01:10and then plastered the whole thing to link it all together.
01:01:13So there's lots of different techniques.
01:01:15Kind of typical Chris fashion, he made this big set,
01:01:18he got to the end, he wanted to blow it up.
01:01:20So we did our best we could to blow that thing up.
01:01:26All these things just helped inform me as a performer.
01:01:29It felt like it was so real that it was easy to lend yourself
01:01:32to that reality and just go for it.
01:01:34And that's a credit to Nate Dogg.
01:01:36You know, he knows what he's doing.
01:01:383, 2, 1, up!
01:01:47Cut!
01:01:48And that's the cut.
01:01:49Cut!
01:01:50Cut!
01:01:533, 2, 1, action!
01:01:56The battle at Stoss 12 at the end, that's the area of the film
01:02:10where you're paying off the concept for the audience.
01:02:13And you can take it to a bigger scale of action.
01:02:16We shot it at the end because we knew that we would have to learn
01:02:20how to do all this stuff before we got to that sequence.
01:02:24When we arrived there, we felt ready to do that
01:02:28and ready to apply it to, like, a real big set piece.
01:02:31For me, I was like, this is Dunkirk on steroids or something.
01:02:36I've never been on a movie of this scale,
01:02:38especially something that's not part of any kind of franchise.
01:02:41that's extraordinary.
01:02:43The environment is as realistic as it's gonna get.
01:02:48It's much easier because you are in a real circumstance
01:02:52that you can feel it and you don't need to, kind of,
01:02:55create your own fantasy.
01:02:58Every set and every location,
01:03:00they all bring their own challenges.
01:03:02In the reality of Tenet, a building can explode,
01:03:05but a building can also rebuild itself.
01:03:07You know, we took the most practical approach.
01:03:09We had a one-third scale building that we blew up the bottom,
01:03:13and we had a one-third scale building we blew up the top,
01:03:15and then we had a full-size building
01:03:17that was kind of the beginning and the aftermath.
01:03:20You know, we've done a lot of movies with green screen stuff,
01:03:23it just feels like such a privilege to be doing it.
01:03:25It feels like, yeah, make the building that explodes itself
01:03:30and comes back together.
01:03:32It feels very, very real, essentially because it is real.
01:03:36Eagle Mountain was at the tail end of our shoot.
01:03:42It had been a long shoot.
01:03:43Everybody was tired.
01:03:45You're in the middle of nowhere, and you're like,
01:03:47oh, my God, it's just gonna be so daunting.
01:03:50And then, all of a sudden, the four Chinooks started up.
01:03:54And it was just, oh, my, like, this is really happening.
01:04:08Even my stunt guy, like seasoned stunt guys,
01:04:11who have seen some pretty epic stuff,
01:04:13were like, you know, you can just see them all kind of standing up
01:04:16and, you know, holding their guns, like, yeah, let's do it, you know,
01:04:18and it just really helped charge the whole crew
01:04:22to push through that three weeks of Eagle Mountain.
01:04:25We were out in the desert.
01:04:35It was hot.
01:04:36Guys were in full gear.
01:04:38The complication there was having to run sequences
01:04:41both forward and backwards.
01:04:43So try running out in the desert over rocks this big,
01:04:46not looking where you're running,
01:04:48and trying to make it look like you're running in the right direction.
01:04:51That was definitely a challenge.
01:04:54It's scary because the scale is so big on this movie
01:04:58that to reset four military helicopters, 600 extras.
01:05:03There's been a few shots where I've just fall.
01:05:07You just fall.
01:05:09I was like, I'm so sorry.
01:05:13It's a credit to George and company
01:05:14just being able to get everybody on the same page
01:05:17to move in unison backwards and forwards.
01:05:19I think these scenes are heightened
01:05:22in a way that it has everyone constantly
01:05:25having to think and work as a team.
01:05:28Eagle Mountain, that was graduation masterclass for all of us.
01:05:32It was like accumulation of everything we learned,
01:05:35put together in this real physical place.
01:05:39Every department head coming to STOS 12
01:05:42brought an expertise it developed over the last six months.
01:05:45And so they were able to pull off a lot of really extraordinary things.
01:05:49When you work with new people, there's always a moment of terror,
01:06:05as you lose the comfort blanket of the people that you've worked with before.
01:06:08Ludwig and Jen both are absolutely incredible,
01:06:13and they both were involved very early on during the shoot.
01:06:16I mean, they brought really fresh energy, new perspectives.
01:06:19Jen Lane sent some extraordinary work prior to this film,
01:06:23and it's easy to look at a large-scale action film
01:06:26and see the editor's influence.
01:06:28It's much harder to look at dramas,
01:06:30to look at smaller-scale things
01:06:32and understand fully the influence of the editor.
01:06:34But good work is good work,
01:06:35and what I was looking for is somebody with a different point of view
01:06:38who would have a fresh take on this type of material.
01:06:41I knew Ludwig's other work,
01:06:45and what was interesting is working with a younger composer,
01:06:48somebody who had a completely different set of references for film school.
01:06:53The great thing about our initial meeting was
01:06:56that wasn't in any way a bad thing.
01:06:58It was a totally positive thing.
01:07:00It was like, okay, we're both gonna bring interesting things to the table.
01:07:04Most times when I start working with a new director,
01:07:07you kind of get thrown in right in the middle of the process
01:07:10when they're editing the movie, you know?
01:07:12This was a little bit different
01:07:13because he contacted me before they started shooting.
01:07:16One of the challenges that I pose to any composer I'm working with
01:07:19is that don't use temp music.
01:07:21I don't love using temp score either
01:07:22because then you just get used to something,
01:07:24and I don't know, it always feels weird to me
01:07:26to import CDs of other composers and put them in.
01:07:29Like, there's something kind of wrong about that.
01:07:31Chris was like, okay, well, do you want to start working?
01:07:34Can you start writing some demos?
01:07:36I went to work straight away.
01:07:40He was able to give me tracks as we were finishing planning the film
01:07:43and things I could listen to as we were shooting.
01:07:47Talking a lot to John and David Washington about his character
01:07:50and just getting his take on the protagonist,
01:07:54that's also extremely inspiring.
01:07:57The last day of shooting in the desert,
01:07:59you know, we're surrounded by thousands of extras in military gear.
01:08:03Barbara Pattinson's driving this truck up the hill,
01:08:06and it's like four helicopters.
01:08:07I was like, kind of dreading, like,
01:08:09okay, I'm going to write music for this scene.
01:08:14We've maintained the tradition, which used to be industry standard
01:08:17until relatively recently, of screening film dailies wherever possible.
01:08:22John Lee has figured out ways over the years of bringing dailies to some of the hardest-to-reach spots in the world.
01:08:29We're in Amalfi right now, and we've found this school, and this is the gym.
01:08:34Lucien, our projectionist, travels with this huge kit of stuff.
01:08:39We screen it at WRAP four or five times a week.
01:08:43We have a big screening.
01:08:45It was such an amazing experience to be able to watch film dailies.
01:08:48Focus, take notes, think how I would use that when I get it in four days.
01:08:53You can't hide in IMAX.
01:08:56Some of my old tricks, maybe, of, like, doing certain things.
01:08:59Like, you really need to be aware of what the end result is.
01:09:06I hadn't done a lot of fight sequences.
01:09:08On top of that, a forwards person fighting a backwards person, it happens twice.
01:09:13I was nervous about that.
01:09:15We shot each sequence twice.
01:09:18I literally directed the scene twice.
01:09:20I talked to Jen early on about a rule which we were able to almost never violate.
01:09:25I think we once had to do it, but to never use the same shot in both sequences, reversed.
01:09:32Now that film's on home video and people are able to scrub the edits and look at it backwards and forwards,
01:09:37they'll see all kinds of differences in the sequences.
01:09:40I felt like I just had to keep referencing the footage over and over again.
01:09:45And it, you know, to the point where I would watch it so many times that I would kind of have to step away and go for a walk and come back.
01:09:51Because it was daunting.
01:09:54You know, editing is a misunderstood profession because it's seen as a technical job in some senses.
01:10:01But the technical part of it is the least of it.
01:10:04It's really about having a sense of story and character and how those things all mesh.
01:10:09And Jen has that absolutely beautifully.
01:10:11She's an extraordinary editor.
01:10:12Another reason why I was excited to work on a Chris Dolan film is because of the music.
01:10:17Chris is so involved with music.
01:10:19Watching him work with Ludwig and getting rough edits of pieces.
01:10:23He came up with a brilliant, brilliant score.
01:10:25What I have always felt about music in film is that it shouldn't be a coat of varnish that's applied to the thing at the end.
01:10:34It should actually be something that's in there in the construction of the film.
01:10:38Because you want it to be part of one of the building blocks of the film.
01:10:41The big airplane heists, for example, when they crashed a 747 into the building.
01:10:50I wrote that piece of music just based on the script.
01:10:53And it just felt like, okay, did you actually shoot this scene while listening to my music?
01:10:58Because everything matches up perfectly.
01:11:04That way you sort of build everything as a whole.
01:11:07And you're seeing how the different elements are working as an organic whole.
01:11:11I think that, you know, visiting the set.
01:11:13Seeing the designs early on.
01:11:15Reading the script obviously ahead of time.
01:11:17And spending as much time as possible with the rest of the creative team.
01:11:21Understanding how these decisions are made and contributing.
01:11:24And feeling the thing grow as a whole.
01:11:27That cohesion is very important to me.
01:11:30The proudest thing for me is now I can look back on the experience.
01:11:40Reading that script and genuinely sitting in that room and thinking,
01:11:44I have no idea how we're going to do half of this stuff.
01:11:47To then completing it and Chris being happy.
01:11:50That's incredible.
01:11:52It just goes to show what can be achieved when you take the time and you have the right people
01:11:59and you put all of those ingredients together.
01:12:02It was ambitious, there's no question.
01:12:05But we were surrounded by the absolute best in the business.
01:12:09And we felt great about the huge talents that were helping us make the movie come to life.
01:12:15I remember Chris, after one of the meetings, he was like, it's going to be hard.
01:12:19He said it just like that.
01:12:21And I laughed, but, you know, months later,
01:12:25Yeah, you were right, sir.
01:12:27It was very hard.
01:12:29Working on a crystalline movie for me is kind of like watching a crystalline movie.
01:12:33Like, it both felt like the hardest job I'll ever have in my life
01:12:36and the hardest work I've ever done and the most fun I've ever had.
01:12:39And I kind of feel like that's what you feel like when you watch a crystalline movie.
01:12:42One movie, you're like, man, I need to see that again. That was crazy.
01:12:44But I had the best time ever.
01:12:46It was undoubtedly the most complicated thing that I've ever been involved with.
01:12:50But it was very inspiring to see how the different department heads
01:12:54and the people working for them rose to the challenges.
01:12:56It made for a very inspiring environment on set.
01:13:00Chris is so knowledgeable about film.
01:13:03He directs everybody, every department.
01:13:06He's not just directing the actors and their performance.
01:13:09He makes sure that everybody understands why you're doing something forward and backwards
01:13:13and the effect it's gonna have in the film.
01:13:15Chris always sets the tone.
01:13:17He sets the tone for me and for the actors.
01:13:19He's never sitting down on an apple box,
01:13:21or he's never shying away from testing out a rig.
01:13:26He can just keep shooting. The rain's coming down. He's, like, loving it.
01:13:30You lose the right to complain about anything. I mean, it's a good move on his part.
01:13:35It's infectious. You can't help but to want to keep going and give it your all.
01:13:39You know, you come to work, you come to play, luckily, because that part of it is important.
01:13:44This is, you know, a fairly brightly puritanical approach to art.
01:13:49There's this really nice tone that, you know, we're all in it together.
01:13:53We're all making this crazy film and let's not be too precious.
01:13:57Let's stay safe and let's do this.
01:14:00When you're a kid and you think about the way they make huge Hollywood movies,
01:14:06this is what I would imagine that to be.
01:14:09Like, this massive team of people that travel the world,
01:14:12go to these incredible locations and shoot all of this amazing stuff.
01:14:17That is Tenet in a nutshell.
01:14:31More than any other film we've done,
01:14:33everything we went through and all the resources we had
01:14:36are there on the screen for the audience to enjoy.
01:14:40And I feel very, very good watching a finished film.
01:14:43That, it's a grand scale entertainment.
01:14:46And for me, that was always the ambition for the film.
01:15:03of the film there and I hope so.
01:15:05It's awesome.
01:15:06Have a great day, guys.
01:15:07We've got a�!
01:15:08We've got an interview with you.
01:15:09All the episodes will be done again.
01:15:10Great.
01:15:11We have to see you in the movie.
01:15:12We've got to see you in the movie,
01:15:13and so we can drag that down for a moment.
01:15:15Let's see you in the movie.
01:15:16We've got to see you in the movie.
01:15:17The movie is a film.
01:15:18He wrote the movie.
01:15:19You can find that you thought you heard anything about it.
01:15:21You can see that I'm going for a film by one.
01:15:22The movie is a film where we could have to be a film.
01:15:24It's a film.
01:15:25And so we can see you in the movie.
01:15:26That's a film where we were going.
01:15:27You can see that!
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