Welcome to the opening sequence commentary
for Star Trek Into Darkness. This is the voice of Roger Guyett.
I was the visual effects supervisor and actually the second unit director.
- And... - And I'm Tommy Harper.
I was co-producer on the film and production manager.
And welcome.
This was the opening sequence that was set on this alien planet.
Obviously, you're listening to us now, and I'm sure you've watched the movie,
an alien planet called Nibiru.
And we had all the natives, the Nibs,
and Kirk and Bones and the whole crew trying to save these guys down there
by essentially freezing the volcano
to avoid it exploding and destroying their culture.
I shouldn't forget to mention Ron Ames, who was the visual effects producer,
and helped, obviously, put all of this work together.
And this was actually... A pretty large chunk of the visual effects
work was spent on this planet.
And actually, the first time we really saw it.
Tommy, you were saying it was one of the first things we prevised.
And Brad Alexander was the previs sup on the show.
The opening shot there was actually done by ILM,
where you push through the smoke
and you look at all the little digital Nibs running around on the ground there.
With all the ash and everything.
But it really is a testament to J.J.'s understanding
of how you can build a set and really make it feel huge.
You have a very limited set and you can reconfigure it slightly.
- And Lauren Polizzi, who was the... - Art director on the set.
These interiors, we just did a bunch of lighting effects outside the shuttle
and then put the ambience of the volcano out there.
But that was all done onstage at Playa on a green screen.
Onstage and just this one shuttle doubles for a lot in the movie.
Yeah, if you actually watch what's going on here,
the spears, some of them were in-camera,
but a lot of them were added digitally
That was certainly one of the couple of moments that we did on second unit.
Certainly J.J. shot the majority of this, of course,
but that was one moment we did.
But poor Daniel, he couldn't quite see where he was actually falling,
'cause you couldn't look down in the helmet.
You couldn't see where you were dropping to,
so it was a little gnarly.
- But this was all onstage, wasn't it? - Yeah, this was all stage, this part.
Non-gimbal, just all camera works.
Another Neville crazy creature there. We love our crazy, little creatures.
I like the mist on the side and you got the floating clothes.
I think some people don't really necessarily notice,
-but we spent a lot of time... - How did you get the ship underwater?
Yeah, exactly.
But of course, this is real and photographed.
But we spent a lot of time trying to develop a look for the ship.
And I think J.J... It was, I think, a superb idea...
I have to say this is actually one of my favorite sequences in the movie,
just comes straight out of the box.
And J.J.'s very much about storytelling.
About how you could show that this device is somehow freezing the lava,
and do it in a very efficient way just in a couple of shots
so you're not breaking up the action too much.
But the idea that suddenly this stuff is frozen in time.
It's very cool. And the things dropping...
Dan Pearson, who did that,
you've got parts of the lava that solidify in the air and then fall down,
and now, we're back onstage.
And you have Burt Dalton, I remember, adding smoke underneath the costume.
So it would look as though Spock had been in this very hot place.
This is literally 50% digital guys and 50% real guys.
Which is amazing. It looks so great.
- Yeah, and I love this transition. - The transition, it's gorgeous.
You hold the guy there in the frame just long enough to make it look...
Just the light change and everything.
This was the new... We went a little bit deeper on the warp thing with the trails.
A little punk rock. That's cool.
And I love the sparky trail thing you did.
- It was great, and there you have it. - Excellent.
On with the rest of the movie, Star Trek Into Darkness.
Hello, everybody, this is Michael Giacchino,
and I'm the composer for Star Trek Into Darkness.
What that means is that I'm the guy that wrote all the music
you hear playing in the film
that is hopefully making you either sad or anxious
or scared or tense
or all of these wonderful emotions that we feel when we watch movies.
I'm not sure how many of you saw the prologue
when it was shown in theaters before the release of The Hobbit.
This scene that you're watching right now,
this actually originally opened the movie.
The cue you're listening to right now
is not the cue that we recorded originally for this scene.
When we recorded the original,
I remember J.J. and I having this discussion, and J.J. was talking about...
but I also took that opportunity to redo some of the red planet music as well,
which is different from what you saw
if you watched the original prologue in front of The Hobbit.
I'm Maryann Brandon.
I'm Mary Jo Markey,
and we cut the movie Star Trek Into Darkness together.
Yeah, this was shot at the Getty with a lot of added bits and pieces
to make it look like a futuristic Starfleet headquarters.
'Cause as we know, Starfleet is situated in San Francisco.
Oh, boy, this scene.
I think this scene was reshot about three times.
Yes, this scene was reshot twice,
because if you go further into the story,
basically, Pike gets killed in a couple of scenes from now.
And there was a real need to establish the relationship between Pike and Kirk.
And although we establish in the first film that he was a father figure to him,
as we all know, you rely on what people's impression of the first film was,
so we had to re-establish the father-son aspect of it.
So we had to create dialogue between them and a dynamic between them
'cause it really needed a breather to land.
And in the original scene, he didn't actually take the ship away...
- He took the ship away from him. - Right.
We changed it so that Starfleet took the ship away
and he couldn't do anything about it.
So that in the next scene that you'll see coming up,
which was rewritten and shot way after the film was shot,
he comes to him with a plan and says, "I pulled every string I could.
"You're gonna be back on the ship,
"but I'm going to personally teach you the things that you don't know."
I think in the first version of the first reshoot,
we tried to do this thing where he took the ship away or whatever
and then he tried to be fatherly to him.
And then finally, I think we just gave it up
and realized it had to be two separate scenes.
Chris really does play it with such vulnerability
and that sort of bravado.
You believe him that he believes he was right.
And interestingly enough, I think also Zach Quinto,
his character of Spock, whose journey is to become
less by the book and more playing it by instinct,
is set up in this scene, too, because he turns in his best friend.
Which is outrageous, even though they're not best friends.
- Right. Not in the Vulcan world. - Not in the Vulcan world.
But he does turn him in, which is unacceptable.
I think it does strike audiences that way.
So, we're back with our villain.
What can you say about Benedict...
Except "awesome."
Except he's an awesome villain of all time?
I mean, you gotta hand it to somebody who can be a villain without...
- Gnashing his teeth ever? - Yes.
And shaking his fist.
And what he brought, I thought, to Chris and Zach and Zoe,
I think everyone's game was just on 10.
- Don't you? - Yeah, absolutely.
I think he was an incredible addition to the cast.
And they're shooting this.
This is the bar scene that we were talking about,
between Captain Kirk and Admiral Pike,
and the one reason that it takes place in a bar
is to remind the audience
we weren't feeling very much about Pike's death, when it happened,
and came to feel that part of the problem with it was that
there was never a point in the movie where we were really on Pike's side,
and that this scene's kind of designed to make you feel like,
"I really care about Pike.
"And I remember what a great guy he is
"and what a great influence he's been on Kirk,
"and how he's really the guy that changed Kirk's life.
"He's a true father to him."
So, I think it's a terrific scene.
I think the film would be hugely diminished if it weren't in this.
Absolutely. And also, I think the two actors,
I think Chris and Bruce were very grateful to do this scene.
I think it really gave them a chance to personalize their relationship
on screen.
And I think everyone got that,
and everyone got the gravity of this scene.
And we deliberately had Admiral Pike say, "I believe in you,"
so that when he gets killed, really, Kirk is alone.
And we really needed Kirk to go to a dark place,
so that you would believe that he would risk the life of his crew to do this,
to go into Klingon space and take revenge.
- It's a great scene. - Yeah.
And it's amazing what you can do
with a little bit of some rubber bands and some glue.
We're actually doing this commentary right now
in the same room that this was shot in.
Yeah, that's true.
- It serves many functions. - Yes.
And so, now, the London bombing that Khan has performed
is under Starfleet's jurisdiction,
and they're trying to figure out what's going on.
This is where Kirk is letting Spock know that they lost the ship.
It was very important that we understand their relationship.
They're friends, but they're different.
And because this is a rewritten, younger crew,
Spock, he's still following the rules as he did as a young cadet,
and Kirk is saying,
"All I'm asking you to do is come over to my side a little."
And Spock feels it, but that he can't show it.
Kirk gives it to him and says,
"I know you don't get it, but I know it's in there somewhere."
It's interesting because it's such a...
Star Trek is so iconic in the culture
that you think of this relationship between these two guys
as a long-term relationship,
but, in the context of this movie, they really barely know...
- Exactly. - They barely know each other.
- They only met in the first movie. - In the last movie.
- These guys. - And it's funny
'cause you do that, you kind of go, "But they're friends."
Mary Jo and I were like, "But they're friends."
And the writers were like,
-"No, they're not friends." -"No, they're not!"
There was a lot of discussion about that stuff.
And it's a very delicate balance to form their relationship,
to know how far to go,
'cause you don't want either of them to be unlikeable.
So they each have to be likeable, and kind of like each other,
but have these differences.
And that's a very tricky balance.
I love the way that J.J. is willing to hold on shots at the end of scenes,
'cause we love to do it and he...
- He's totally into it. - He's totally...
We don't have to cut it out.
It doesn't have to move at lightning speed.
Sometimes it's great when it does, and then it's also great when it doesn't.
This scene.
This is the first scene that Peter really has much of a role in, right?
Right. He has a big, long speech about...
- Also rewritten several times. - Right.
And let me just say, as an editor, I'm sure you'd agree, Mary Jo,
cutting a roundtable scene with a lot of people is just not that much fun.
It's not easy.
It's really hard to get people to look in the right direction.
But I think it's pretty seamless.
I really love the way that Peter Weller comes across in the film, his character.
And there's a point in the film, I think, where you almost
think of him as a potential new father figure for Captain Kirk.
I think he really came across great in the film.
- Yeah, he's very serious in this. - Yeah.
Is when we can do it practically or he can do it practically, he will.
It always helps with the other visual effects shots
because there's a reality to it.
Even though it's just a bar of light, there's a reality to it that you just feel.
You can't put your finger on it, but it's definitely there.
This scene was much longer.
This whole section of this scene was much longer
in the original previs that we were given.
And then at one point, we were asked to look at it to try to cut the previs down,
because they just didn't have enough shooting time for all of this.
So, we cut it down and...
- And down, yet some more. - Right.
Because the truth is, once the ship starts shooting,
it's very interesting, how long can you sustain it...
- Right. There were all these... -...shooting, before it was...
And then on another more emotional level,
it was interesting because there was a version,
Kirk was in the room when Pike gets killed,
and he witnesses Pike getting killed.
And, in fact, he runs over to him, and Spock runs over to him,
and he says, "I gotta go do my thing and you save Pike,"
who has already been shot.
It just wasn't working and it wasn't working.
We didn't know which order.
Was he gonna scream "Pike" and then have him be shot?
Or was he gonna be shot and then he was gonna scream "Pike"?
And then finally, we came up with,
"You know what? He shouldn't even see him get killed."
Because, dramatically, if he's trying to save the whole room,
in his mind he knows Pike's in there as well,
and he thinks he's saved Pike,
and then he runs in at the end and Pike's dying,
it's so much more moving.
And I don't know why it took us so long to think of it, but...
It definitely worked a lot better once you guys made that change.
But there were all those other things, remember?
Spock lifted a column off of somebody that was trapped under a big beam
-that had fallen. - That's right. Captain Abbot.
And then there was another thing
where Kirk was helping some woman that had been shot...
- Right. Fixing her leg... - Yeah.
And it was so not kind of heroic.
It was nice. It was nice of him to fix her leg, but...
It was also like, if you're Captain Kirk, you're gonna go save the whole room.
You're not gonna wait.
And what was interesting about it, what I find interesting as an editor,
a lot of times is if I look at a scene and I go,
"I don't believe this scene.
"I don't believe that ship would shoot for more than a minute."
Without somebody getting something in the air?
Right. And with it being done or it being totally demolished,
you have to listen to your gut and go,
"Then it's not right. It's too long. Everything about it is too long.
"It's not gonna land emotionally."
It took us going back and forth and back and forth a lot
to reconceive it.
And it's also hard when something's conceived one way
to pitch the other way, which we did.
I do think, though, that from all of the years that we've worked with J.J...
I mean, we used to reimagine scenes when we were doing Alias,
and repurposing shots
and figuring out a way to make the scene be something other than it was,
and he doesn't get attached to a moment.
He's always willing to think of another way to do it,
which is really helpful.
I think it's exciting. I think that's what movie magic is,
is to see a story that you've written and shot,
and then to see the possibilities that are in front of you.
It's a very exciting time in the cutting room with all this footage.
The possibilities are really enormous.
And I'm grateful that we can open our mind to that.
Poor Captain Pike.
- So this was the first... - No, no, this is also...
Remember, there was a debate about
whether or not he should put his hand on his shoulder?
Should we use the take where he put his hand on his shoulder,
or where he didn't put his hand on his shoulder?
Like, how close are they feeling to one another at this moment?
But I think J.J., in the end, decided that
And these kind of structural things, which I thought was a really cool thing.
But basically, he's standing on an apple box with a green screen.
This is another shot we shot, actually, in the tower at Bad Robot.
We didn't have a moment where Kirk just lost all hope.
And we felt we needed it right before he gets called to action.
Just him taking in the gravity of everything that's happened.
And we thought it would be cool to show
the wrecked Starfleet headquarters in the background.
There was even a debate about who was gonna call him.
- Yeah. - I remember. It's Spock.
But originally, it was gonna be Scotty, I think.
Which only Marcus knows has actually been built.
And also, wouldn't you say that scene...
I think that scene was really key because it sets up
that war is coming with the Klingons.
And it also sets up the whole idea of where these missiles were built,
and that it was a secret, secret place,
and that Starfleet is actually dabbling now in military...
of what is acceptable in the eyes of Starfleet,
but he really doesn't say anything.
He kind of just stands there and supports Kirk.
He reserves his judgment or his discussion
for when they're alone on the shuttle.
Now, this scene was rewritten and reshot a few times.
There are shots in it that were, again, filmed here at Bad Robot,
and with some of these painted backdrops.
Although this stuff was in the original scene,
they were more implied and referred to than just boldly stated
the way that Spock is stating them now.
But I think it was really important, because it's where, again,
where we're really making clear what the themes are of the film,
this idea of personal goals versus universal goals,
and universal principles versus taking things into your own hands
and deciding that your principles are the ones that are important.
And I think it's also where you get...
Just emotionally, you see Captain Kirk basically saying,
"I'm gonna do this thing.
-"I'm gonna take revenge." -"I'll do what I want."
This also is obviously the first time that we meet Alice Eve's character.
There had been in the script, earlier, a scene where Kirk met her
right after Pike had told them that he had been let go by Starfleet.
And then, later on, J.J. and the writers,
with a little prodding from us, decided to take...
- It wasn't necessary. - Yeah, not necessary.
Again, it just felt too much like...
No, what's interesting about keeping her introduction for this part of the film
is that you're not sure if she's...
- Good or bad. - Good or bad.
And it's always an interesting layer and another element of intrigue.
And I think she does bring that, for a while,
until you realize who she is and why she's there.
And also, all those suspicious looks that Spock gives her.
I mean, he definitely...
We think of him as a person with good judgment,
and he's just not sure about her.
I think it helps enormously to suspect her for a while.
And then we have another voice of reason in this scene with Scotty...
- I think Scotty's brilliant in this scene. - Yeah, he's just great. He's just great.
You just remember how much you love him,
because he is a character
and he always is the character who is so true to himself.
And so true to his engine room, and to the ship. And he never wavers.
I love this environment, too. Obviously, most of it is green screen.
And this is actually one of my favorite scenes in the film,
because it's just these two actors doing an incredible job,
and J.J. doing an incredible job directing them
and giving me great shots.
And he's even willing to give up
this deep affection and friendship that he has with Scotty.
And even normally would never reject the advice that Scotty gives him.
He's so sure he's right.
And I think that's why this scene is so important.
Because you have to believe that Kirk believes he's doing the right thing.
And I really enjoyed this scene, as well.
She is so funny without saying a word through almost the entire scene.
I think she barely has a word, but...
They just did a great job in this two shot.
And there was a lot more to the scene, but we ended up cutting it back.
There didn't need to be as much dialogue about the situation.
I think he took a real risk with the "I want to rip his bangs off' line.
But, I have to say, it always gets a great laugh,
-and I think it's what humanizes them. - Right.
What's my favorite moment, you ask?
I love the moment when Kirk says, "Put on a red shirt," to Chekov.
- He has that great look. - And he claps him on the shoulder.
"I'm not putting on a red shirt. Everyone knows what that means."
-"I'm dead." - Red is dead in Star Trek lore.
Now, this scene was also a huge, huge debate, it's going back and forth.
We had... Didn't you have five different...
No, you had it two majorly different ways.
I had two majorly different ways.
It actually went back to the way it was in the script.
But at one point, I think it was J.J. that felt that
if Kirk and Spock were really going to
take different points of view on this whole issue,
the idea being that
if they were really gonna be on opposite sides of the issue,
that Kirk should not change his mind and take Spock's advice
here in the middle of this decision-making moment.
So we recut it, and it was not so easy because of the scene that follows
where Spock comes back onto the bridge
and Kirk says, "We're gonna do it your way."
That was not an easy thing to change, but we figured out a way to change it.
But then he ended up feeling like
Kirk was just gonna feel like too much of a jerk
if he never, ever listened to Spock about anything.
That Kirk was just too far over the edge.
He was just too far gone.
And that we also weren't gonna feel the closeness between them
that everybody expects, sort of.
I mean, they needed to be at odds,
but we also need to feel that they believe in each other in some way.
I think that's the key, isn't it? It's like they can argue,
but that ultimately they need each other, as Spock Prime says in the first film,
like you're gonna find that you need each other to balance each other out.
A ship at warp.
They're just amazing. The mechanics in these shots absolutely blow me away.
- And the physics. - Yeah, the physics set-up.
Like where things and lights and... It's very clever.
It's always like when I would say to Roger,
"Doesn't that seem like it's falling kind of slow," or something,
and he would say, "Well, you know, with the calculations..."
"We have calculated at ILM,
"and we had five scientists come in and explain to us that Saturn actually..."
It's amazing.
I love these shots where the guys fall out of their chairs,
and they make it look so real.
And I also think that the falling-out-of-warp shots are amazing.
Yes. And we spent a lot of time discussing
how one falls out of warp, by the way.
And I guess you now realize that you have to go through the warp tunnel
and there are warp trails that follow you out.
Everyone knows that.
Now this was... J.J. and I particularly got a big chuckle out of
this Spock thing where he...
His kind of deadpan...
Right. I mean, isn't that everyone's relationship?
Right. And Kirk's complete exasperation about it.
- Yes. - And Bones doing his Bones thing.
Karl's so funny
when he plays that indignant stuff.
Yeah, he's really good.
I mean, Karl Urban is amazing at playing that character.
- And John Cho. - I love John Cho.
Now this was another thing that came up later.
Sulu's a real badass.
And didn't you guys rewrite the whole...
We didn't rewrite it.
We decided to play it over with shots of the missiles.
Because the missiles being loaded used to have their own scene,
and it just seemed a little bit not worthy of having its own scene.
So, yes, we recorded John Cho...
The dialogue, I think, was essentially the same.
We might have given him a few new lines in there,
but it was basically just to make him seem even tougher
that you're seeing these missiles over his threats.
But I guess that's coming up, because we haven't seen that yet.
He does a great job of being excited about being the new captain.
Yes, he does. He looks very trepidatious, but excited.
- Very excited. - Yeah.
And there's that little trade ship,
which I love the design of.
- It's fabulous. - It looks so old and slightly rickety.
It's a throwback, also, to the Mudd episodes of the original...
- Right, the older technology. -...television show.
Here's another scene that has a couple of reshoots in it.
No kidding. But I actually really...
I mean, I liked it in its old form, but I like it so much better in its new.
This is the transmission scene
-where Sulu is making his threats to... - Khan, who's on Kronos.
Yeah. He doesn't even really know who he's making his threats to yet,
but it is Khan on Kronos.
But it's also important that you get the bigness of the announcement,
because it's interesting, because you have to realize that
Khan is gonna hear this on Kronos,
so when you play it over the outside of the ship,
-you realize this is going wide. - Wide.
- It's not just ship-wide, it's wide wide. - Yeah, it's bigger than that.
And it's a very important element in later, making it work,
that Khan reacts to the fact that there are those missiles on board.
Another beautiful environment created by the visual effects people.
Then we get to this scene, which was originally really
continued more in this vein of,
not of a lovers' spat kind of sense...
Starts that way, but it became a scene that was really designed
to help Uhura more fully understand Spock,
and then, of course by extension, to help us understand Spock better.
And we ended up feeling that it needed to be more about
a much deeper understanding of Spock's emotional make-up,
or un-emotional make-up, or whatever it is exactly that a Vulcan has.
He talks about the experience of seeing his whole planet die
and the existential experience of that,
and how it has made him feel even more committed to the Vulcan way.
It still worked, as far as helping her understand him better,
but it gave us a much deeper understanding of Spock, as well.
And I think it also expanded the scene so that Kirk understands Spock.
- Exactly. - It very much affects Kirk.
It worked much better for both of them
and for us as a viewer, too, to have access.
Interestingly enough, all those shots of Kirk that are in there,
even though we did do a reshoot,
most of those shots of Kirk were from the original scene.
It's extremely interesting to realize how flexible shots can be
when you start cutting something.
It may be a reaction that was originally meant to work for something else,
but it ends up working really beautifully for a new purpose.
We actually didn't have Zach for the reshoot,
we had to use parts of his dialogue that were on camera
that still worked for the new rewrite,
and then the rest of it was ADR that he did an incredible job on.
It is not easy to do that kind of performance
when you're just standing in front of a microphone on an ADR stage,
but he did such an amazing job.
So I think this is... I love this chase.
- Yeah. That's a beautiful environment. - Through Kronos.
And I love this part, there's a particular little detail that I think is so brilliant,
which is when he's trying to get away
and they go into this little crack between the thing,
That was endlessly thinking, "What are we doing?"
And, "How can we use shots that don't play as what they should play as in?"
I would argue that on the planet, that Kronos is the epitome of flexible.
Yeah, that's true.
Well, I would say it was very exciting to cut Star Trek Into Darkness.
We had a great adventure.
It was incredible to work with the talented people that we get to work with.
And I'd love to name them all, but you can read the credits.
- And there are a lot of them. - It really was...
I think it was just one of the...
We've done several movies with J.J. now
and essentially with the same crew, and it really was one of the most fun.
I don't know, it just came together...
Don't you think it just gets better and better?
Yeah, I guess it does.
You know, the communication is really open and people are...
You know, what's fantastic about working on these films is
I think everyone's open to the possibilities.
And that's what makes it really fun.
Or just... I only did the 8-perf Iwerks camera.
We did a bit of rickshaw work, where we go hand-held in the rickshaw.
So we have this big yellow beacon flashing in the background very slowly,
almost too off. It decays very slowly
And the effect in there is fantastic.
There's wind, there's particulate matter,
you can see the black plastic floating in the air,
which was really hard to live with for the number of days we were there.
The set incorporated so much moving light.
A lot of it... In fact, all of it was from above.
There were no lights on the set.
Right. We had all the actual moving lights.
We did theatrical moving lights.
We manually panned Xenon lights.
And we had actual shark cages, eight of them,
with moving lights and Xenons and static lights.
And those would actually be articulated on a winch-driven system
so they could move all around the set
to create the illusion of movement.
We had one that actually would move over the set,
and then we had eight that were stationary
and had moving lights within them.
The temperature in there was enormous,
and these guys in their outfits with prosthetics on
were amazingly good-natured about it, given their size.
Sorry, off to the left here like that,
and then swoops across as he undercuts that dude,
and then cranes up and high to the right.
It was a 360-degree set, as well.
Basically, we could shoot in any direction,
given that the lights were all hanging from above.
That's true. The turnarounds are actually quite quick and fast,
it was more about moving stuff out of the way.
It wasn't really about lighting direction.
Look at that.
So, do you wanna talk about how you shot that?
Yeah, I shot all those guys descending and coming in from above.
But that's basically a practical stunt. The place is so big.
I mean, I think it was 80 feet to the perms.
So you could actually put stunt guys on descenders
and drop them from the perms, and then mix it up in with the action.
I love the way Roger gets those particles on the front of the lens.
- Did he add that? - Yeah.
Our guys would never let that happen.
Which I think is really awesome.
The colors are quite extreme in this case.
Especially 'cause of the contrasts, the color contrast,
that sort of deep, saturated yellow, and that sort of otherworldly cyan.
We also greened up the HMIs.
We did. We added green to the HMIs.
- Plus green? - Yeah.
I think we actually added a blue-green color, too, in some cases.
The ones that were hung from the perms.
We actually had some in the perms, some HMIs.
Not to mention, do you remember we had a portable yellow light effect?
- Yeah... - We used to call it a lava light,
'cause we would drive it around, and it was a condor with
100 of them, or something like that.
It wouldn't be fair to carry on without a mention of Chris Prampin
and the lighting team.
John Manocchia, the rigging gaffer, and Christopher Prampin, the gaffer,
these guys did a phenomenal job.
Along the way, these guys were constantly coming up
with new drawings and diagrams.
So we should give credit to our camera teams.
We have a phenomenal bunch of camera assistants
who are pulling focus on
some of the toughest cameras to pull focus on in the world.
These IMAX cameras have very little depth.
Serge Nofield, Nino Neuboeck, Keith Davis.
These guys are top focus pullers. And Bob Hall, of course.
Prominent on the second unit.
Camera operators Colin Anderson, Philippe Carr-Forster,
Andrew Rowlands and Dale Myrand came up with some really genius shots.
Constantly doing brilliant work on the cranes and Steadicam and dolly.