- 2 days ago
Connect with Deadline online!
https://www.facebook.com/deadline/
https://twitter.com/DEADLINE
https://www.instagram.com/deadline/
https://www.youtube.com/Deadline
https://www.facebook.com/deadline/
https://twitter.com/DEADLINE
https://www.instagram.com/deadline/
https://www.youtube.com/Deadline
Category
🎈
FunTranscript
00:00You know, when you dissect it all,
00:02Xosha is manipulating Carol
00:03because she wants Carol to turn and become one of them.
00:07Is there really a connection there,
00:08or is this all just a big manipulation?
00:11It's a huge credit to Carolina.
00:14That's such a difficult character to play
00:17because, as an actor, you want to be playing these emotions
00:20or you want to be playing these moments,
00:22and they have to maintain this level
00:24while also still being human in some way.
00:28And yeah, those scenes are very complicated
00:31because there's so much going on at all times
00:33when the two of them are together.
00:48Nobody knew what the show was for the entire season.
00:51We didn't even know what the show was.
00:52As we were going through the process with Vince,
00:55every time we would get feedback from him on auditions
00:58or every time we would talk more deeply and meaningfully about a role,
01:03you know, he is describing in real time how it's coming together for him.
01:08And so you take those pieces and, you know, you just dive into that.
01:13In all honesty, this is probably the most challenging project of my career.
01:18I've been doing this for close to 30 years.
01:20And I never was in a situation where I had no idea what the parameters of what was right
01:27and what was wrong was.
01:29And I think that is both thrilling and anxiety driving.
01:33But Vince is a very brave listener.
01:36And I think that one of the really wonderful things is he lets you have bad ideas.
01:40And he lets you present ideas that you're not absolutely sure are going to make sense.
01:44I love how unique the tone of the show is.
01:48And it all starts with Vince.
01:49It starts with the scripts.
01:51It starts with, you know, he has this vision for the show.
01:53And it has this really unique tone where we can go from something that's so serious
01:58to something that's just absolutely hilarious, like, you know, on a dime.
02:03There's no tonal quality that's quite like this.
02:06So we had an opportunity to try something very new.
02:08And that sprout sequence was in many ways the first one that we got a chance to say,
02:14this is an interesting direction.
02:16Let's see if this works.
02:17And I'm thrilled with how it came out.
02:35We rarely cut with music.
02:38We don't temp score in any of our stuff that we worked on with Vince.
02:42Except for when we do those montages.
02:44And that was something that we got from Thomas Golovich, our music supervisor.
02:47Yeah, I mean, I think for each episode, we have an opportunity and we kind of look at it with
02:53a clean canvas.
02:54With Vince's projects, all of them, we have the great luxury of not using temp.
02:59That means that we are not having ideas that are already preset that we're trying to beat.
03:04We start the whole conversation about that sequence clean, which means that we can use either dialogue,
03:10we can use silence, we can use sound design, we can use songs, and we can use score.
03:15All of them are options on how to deepen the experience.
03:19And in many ways, the balance of each of those choices is going to depend on the rhythm of the
03:24episode,
03:25the impact of the moment, and who gets a chance to kind of solo, almost like a band.
03:30He sent like 20 songs or something that were maybe options for that.
03:35And that was the one that just, from the moment I heard it, I was like, I think that's what
03:41I have to cut with.
03:41Even if we replace it later, which we never did.
03:44We got lucky and were able to license it, and it just works so well.
03:47So many options.
03:48That's great.
03:49And they're all great.
03:50Yeah, they're all great.
03:5120 songs are like, every one of these is great.
03:56Carol, may we sneak past you here?
04:11So we really worked our way through different, you know, tonal qualities to figure out where it is.
04:16And that was really the hard part.
04:18I wouldn't even say there's one cue in particular.
04:21They were all hard.
04:22And I know that I have to go through hundreds of choices with Olivia, my coordinator,
04:27to figure out what do we even want to present to our music editors to cut out,
04:33to figure out what we even want to present to Vince.
04:35So it's this process of massive options, whittling them down to the ones that feel right.
04:40The amount of prep work that goes into every single cue is absolutely behemoth.
04:44But I always feel really good about those final five, that those are the choices we feel really good about.
04:49And they all have an interesting angle to the scene.
04:52And some of them are counterintuitive.
04:54Some of them are really on the money.
04:56Some of them are a little bit at an angle.
04:58And as long as he feels excited by those choices and the possibilities of what they say about our story,
05:03then I feel like we've done our job effectively.
05:25In terms of comedy, Vince loves hyper-realistic things.
05:29This kind of harkens back to Breaking Bad, where you take something and kind of exaggerate it sonically.
05:33So that was one of the things that we had fun with to kind of create that tension,
05:37to create that comedic relief that was needed.
05:39You know, it really takes a village.
05:40So we have, think of it as cooking.
05:42We have the editors and the sound designers and everybody kind of working to give us the ingredients,
05:47prepping the ingredients, and then the re-recording mixtures.
05:50We're kind of the chefs.
05:50We take all those ingredients and then make the meal.
05:52One of the things that Vince really found was going to be the challenge was,
05:57once the others are communicating kind of telepathically, there's not a lot of noise in the show,
06:02but not a lot of sound, if you will.
06:03So one of the challenges was to keep it alive through wildlife.
06:11Give me a fight.
06:17Why don't you just let me be?
06:20I'm alright.
06:21We kept those things alive, but you know, there's nobody's driving, so there's no traffic.
06:29As I said, we kind of wanted to sell the fact that the world was still alive,
06:34when they were all together kind of role-playing in Las Vegas.
06:37That's when we had an opportunity to kind of just burst open the gates sonically,
06:40and have, you know, remember the people role-playing, you know, the bedding and all that.
06:54It's really the contrasts, you know, trying to keep it interesting sonically,
06:58but allowing there to be space between the notes so that when there were events that they were larger than
07:03life.
07:03Las Vegas was Las Vegas.
07:06Peru, we did not go to Peru.
07:08That was in Albuquerque.
07:09And whatever we could do in New Mexico, we tried to do.
07:13But we did shoot quite a bit in the Canary Islands.
07:17And the Canary Islands served as Central America, South America.
07:22The whole point is to try to give it a global kind of scope.
07:27Ice Hotel. Creatively, that was probably the most satisfying.
07:31And the biggest challenge, probably.
07:33Yeah.
07:34We found a vendor in Los Angeles that made some translucent ice blocks and some sheet goods
07:41that we then were able to ship in, and they turned out to be pretty good quality stuff.
07:48And then the rest of it was Styrofoam, found two sculptors that were very talented,
07:53and one gentleman did the 3D fish that's over the headboard.
07:58So we got good people, and it all fell together pretty well.
08:03Yeah, I mean, it was like an installation, like a work of art.
08:06A lot of testing.
08:06Which was the whole concept, because when they do these ice hotels for real,
08:12they commission artists to go in and take a theme and create these rooms seasonally.
08:18And so we thought, well, we can do that, but we just did it with Styrofoam instead of ice.
08:25And working with the DP on backlighting some of those panels to get a nice little,
08:31which enhanced the surface of those sheets, which really read well.
08:38And lots of paint tricks, too, that made it look like real ice.
08:42You know, that was the big fear that it wouldn't look real.
08:45And, you know, and I think it looks pretty real.
08:48People would walk in and actually feel colder.
08:50And I'm like, well, you know.
08:53For Carol's house, it was designed in a way that, you know,
08:57we knew she was going to be kind of isolated in there.
09:00And we knew she was going to shut all the windows and close the doors.
09:04So we put an atrium in the middle of the house because we knew all the windows and doors would
09:08be shut.
09:09And this way it allows our director of photography to actually get some light in.
09:14And you can see the difference between night and day, when it's night, when it's daytime.
09:17And then there's a series of arches.
09:19So she's constantly running around the house.
09:22So whenever you're standing inside a certain area, you can see beyond and you can see through these arches.
09:29So it's a little bit of a caged animal kind of thing.
09:32You know, we built that whole cul-de-sac, that whole neighborhood.
09:35So he was very specific about where Carol's house is, what we see out the windows, that we had views
09:45of New Mexico,
09:46that we could see each front door and each garage from Carol's house.
09:51So when this event starts happening, you know, we can see it kind of in real time.
09:58There was an episode where Manusos comes and visits Carol and there's a language barrier and they're using Google Voice.
10:04And we had some fun gags with the phone falls down the sewer and we kind of treat it like
10:09that.
10:09No signal! Give it to me! Give it! Give it!
10:15No! God damn it!
10:21I would say for me, the biggest creative challenge that was awesome to get to tackle was the fact that
10:29you have so many scenes where it's just one person.
10:31And luckily we have actors who can hold the frame in Rey and also in Vesca.
10:38And they spend these huge stretches of time where it's just them.
10:43And it's really hard also because everything's quiet.
10:48So you have nowhere to hide. You know, you just have these actors.
10:51And so it's a great and rewarding challenge when it actually works out.
10:56If you could show viewers one audition tape from Pluribus, who would it be and why?
11:01For me, I think it would be Carolina.
11:04I think that it was a very, very long journey on that role.
11:10And I think that the excitement of hearing Russell scream from down the hallway, you know, whatever happened to Carolina
11:18Weedra?
11:19And we all just went.
11:20It's a huge credit to Carolina.
11:22I mean, that's such a difficult character to play because as an actor, you want to be playing these emotions
11:29or you want to be playing these moments.
11:31And they have to maintain this level while also still being human in some way.
11:37And yeah, those scenes are very, very complicated because there's so much going on at all times when the two
11:43of them are together.
11:44They play really well off of each other.
11:46You know, when you dissect it all, Zosia is manipulating Carol because she wants Carol to turn and become one
11:53of them.
11:54Is there really a connection there or is this all just a big manipulation?
11:59You like omelets, right?
12:02We do.
12:03We love all breakfast food.
12:06Sure.
12:07Sure.
12:08Sure.
12:08But you, you, like lowercase you, does Zosia like omelets?
12:15Zosia likes, I like omelets.
12:21Never had many chances to try them.
12:24Hmm.
12:26What is your favorite food?
12:38Mango ice cream.
12:41I love mango ice cream.
12:44How I decide when to cut and when to cut away, you know, Ray is so captivating that, you know,
12:52she enters a room and we're seeing what she's supposed to be seeing.
12:56Your internal clock kind of dictates, I think, a lot of that.
13:01So when to cut away is like, what is, what, what is, what is she seeing right now?
13:05One of my favorite pieces of casting the, this first season was Jeff Hiller who played Larry.
13:11Um, and that was like, you were talking about the essence of the person and the character.
13:15Yes, that's why I think it's great.
13:17Because we had read a lot of wonderful actors and so many who were, who were great and gave great
13:22reads and, uh, but Vince still wasn't seeing what he was looking for.
13:25And we're just, I'm just, we're all sitting around thinking like, who else?
13:28Who else?
13:29And then suddenly Jeff Hiller just popped into my brain.
13:31Yes.
13:32And I immediately knew that is the person.
13:35Do you like my books?
13:37Oh, we love your books.
13:39What do you love about them?
13:41Everything.
13:42Your books are an expression of you and we love you.
13:45It's really good.
13:46Yes.
13:46For him to be nominated as a guest star in a series.
13:49Incredible.
13:50Uh, those two roles were probably two of my favorite pieces of casting for the season.
13:55Uh, Jeff Hiller and John Cena.
13:56With John, we all kind of got on the phone with Vince.
13:59And as soon as somebody said John Cena, Vince was like, Oh yeah.
14:03Yes.
14:03Perfect.
14:03That's who I want.
14:05Um, and you know, he's a very busy guy, but we were, we actually went to shoot him on
14:10a, like a Saturday when he was shooting a show in Florida.
14:13Uh, they sent a whole crew there to film that scene.
14:16You make it happen.
14:17Yeah.
14:17Vince Gilligan makes it happen.
14:19Hello Carol.
14:21We're John Cena.
14:22And we're here to address some questions you may be having regarding our food supply.
14:26We're so specific about each choice and Vince really leads that conversation so well.
14:32So each of us, whether it's Dave Porter doing score or Nick doing sound design or any of our
14:37team members, we each know how we can contribute and we take a try to see if we can find
14:42a way
14:43to deepen the experience somehow.
Comments