[Jen Nelson] All right. We're here to blather about the movie.
This is Jen Nelson, the director of The Darkest Minds.
[Dan Levine] And Dan Levine, producer.
[Dan Cohen] And Dan Cohen, executive producer.
- [Jen] Wow. This is... - [Dan L] That's the logo.
[Jen] This is probably the first time we've watched the movie
in a little while, right?
- I think we gotta re-up our... - [Dan C] Several months.
- [Jen] Re-up our hard drives. - [Dan L] I hear good things.
[Jen laughs]
[Jen] Well, this was really about two years...
This was really about two years of us trying to figure out
how to make this movie, right?
[Dan L] Yeah, to get the script right and how to make it feel different
from the other sort of YA dystopian movies out there.
[Jen] Yeah, because when I first met you guys, it was two years ago...
- [Dan C] Yeah. - [Jen] ...almost to the day, pretty much.
- [Dan C] Yeah. - [Dan L] Was it really?
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan L] You checked your diary?
- [Jen] I think so. It's on my calendar. - [Dan L] Nice.
[Jen] And I read the script, and we're chatting about this movie
as being something you were very passionate about
- for a while, right? - Yes. Oh, yeah. No, we... Dan and I...
[Dan C] I think we've been working on this for what?
- Seven years? - [Dan L] Yeah, six, seven years.
[Dan C] I want to say it was 2011 when we sold the book to Fox.
[Dan L] By the way, we've not been talking about the cup shaking,
which was very hard to get.
- People might think that was an easy bit. - [Jen] I wanted that cup shaking so bad.
[Dan L] I know. We... I think we got it right.
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan L] But there was...
[Ruby] Every war starts quietly.
[Dan C] It's a long journey getting there.
- [Dan L] Yes. - [Jen] Yeah, so...
[Dan L] It's always good to start a movie with a kid dying in cafeteria class room.
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan L] It's always... one of those
sort of movie 101s that they teach you at school.
[Jen] Pretty much, but this moment was in the book,
- and it's also... - [Dan L] Yes.
[Jen] ...in the script, in the very early passes of the script.
It started off the whole story with such a bang.
[Dan L] I feel like the...
What we had in the early scripts, most of it's still in the movie.
The script while it always got better and better,
the bones of it were always, story-wise, very much the same.
Strange and unexplained incidents involving surviving children...
- [Jen] Definitely. - [Dan L] Except for this scene, which you
always find that, when you finish a movie, you have to go back
and reshoot all your newscast scenes to better fit the movie.
I think everyone makes the mistake of doing them while you're filming,
which makes sense, but somehow your story shifts, and then it never tracks,
and you always do these quick reshoots with the newscasters.
- Like this. - [Jen] Like this.
It's like a fancy little pickup shot that we got on the Fox lot.
- [Dan C] Yep. - [Dan L] Yes, we did.
We shot this all in Atlanta,
but this was something we did in LA a few months back, just to, uh...
[Jen] Get the information exactly right
- that he's talking about. - [Dan L] Yeah, move the story along,
- set it up a little better. - Yeah, I think that's...
the beginning of our movie, we always had to figure out how to get the...
[Dan C] It's always a balance of world-building, and yet getting at it
- in an emotional way. - [Jen] Right.
[Dan C] Getting across all of our characters, like Clancy there.
[Jen] And... what's also nice is starting off with a little bit of sympathy
so that you kind of feel for the dad dealing with the fact his son
- is going through all this stuff. - [Dan L] Personalize it.
[Dan C] Yeah.
[Jen] I think, throughout every step of the process,
we're always trying to find those little emotional beats
to put in there to humanize everyone
and keep this from becoming so straight-out about the dystopia.
- It's more about people. - [Dan L] I think that's why
we wanted to cast Bradley as the president,
just because he felt grounded and real, and...
[Jen] Yeah. this was probably the first...
[Dan L] Do you remember there was a big thunderstorm?
[Jen] This was the first day of shooting.
[Dan C] Yeah, there was a huge storm outside.
- We were worried about losing power. - [Jen] It was the very first day of shoot.
This was the scene where me and the DP, Kramer, and H, the first AD,
were crammed in the kid's closet around the corner,
- 'cause there was no room. - [Dan L] Yeah. Felt very left out.
[Jen] Yeah... Literally no room in the closet. It was about two by two.
You don't have to worry about me.
I'll be fine.
[Paul] Okay, bed time.
I love you.
[Jen] So, this wasn't in the book, and it's...
[Dan C] This is a late addition in developing the script.
Right. It was a late addition.
It was something that we wanted to make sure that you thought of...
You're with little Ruby as she's thinking about her parents
and trying to give a tangible goal for her to try to get home for...
Like, she's thinking about home, so this is the object she looks at
- when she's thinking about home. - [Dan I and Dan C] Mm-hmm.
[Jen] And there was no physical object in the book.
[Dan L] How did that pop in your head?
- [Dan C] What's the back story there? - [Jen] Funnily enough, a friend of ours
who's a story artist, actually, in live action,
Amy, gave my husband a souvenir card from Japan
when she went traveling to Japan.
[Dan L] I remember seeing early props of that.
[Dan C] It's always fun when you're working on a story,
seeing how an idea evolves.
- [Jen] Right. - [Dan C] And as we did more passes
deep into prep,
seeing how it became more prevalent in the script and more important
as you'll see later in the movie, too.
[Jen] Right, and the fact that, of course, later on in the movie,
the fact that it becomes this thing that Ruby gives Liam
sort of to send him away with,
again, it's a visual way of showing, "remember me."
[Dan L] I remember with Mike Sable in props,
looking at the different versions,
- and trying to figure out... - [Jen] Yeah, there were some ugly ones.
- And then there's some cute ones. - [Dan L] I was worried this one was
too small, but it actually turned out to be just right.
- [Jen] It fits well in a kid's hand. - [Dan L] Fits well in the hand.
[Jen] Yeah, 'cause you have something too big,
and then you think the guards are really stupid for missing it, but...
[Dan L] Everyone watching and wondering, this is actually a real house.
We did not build this.
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan L] We took over someone's house
who was nice enough to rent it to us.
[Jen] There was this awesome motorcycle in the garage that we had to shoot around.
I think they had to move it out, but it was just a crazy-huge cruiser bike
with an Evel Knievel color scheme.
- [Dan L] Nice. - [Jen] I wanted to keep it.
- [Dan L] How is that not in the movie? - [Jen] I don't know.
Well, I guess we should've talked to the prop master.
- [Dan L] Is it too late? - [Jen laughs]
[Jen] Oh, man.
Lidya was so good.
- [Dan L] Yeah. She was great, a real pro. - [Jen] Yeah, she...
[Dan L] All our kid actors were so good in this movie.
[Jen] We really lucked out. Not only were they great actors
and performers and professionals, but they're really nice to be around.
[Dan C] Yeah.
[Jen] And Lidya was talking about how she wants to be a veterinarian.
I thought, "She has it all planned out."
[Dan C] Hopefully, we didn't ruin that by giving her a taste of acting.
[Jen laughs]
[Dan L] The one thing to talk about would be just past the scenes of the landscape
as they're leaving, as we really didn't want this movie
to be your typical YA dystopian,
"Far in the future, buildings raised, big war had been fought."
We really wanted it to feel a minute in the future
and just, really, the absence of children.
What would the world look like without kids in it?
- [Jen] And part of it... - [Dan L] And we wanted a big truck.
- [Jen] Right. - [Dan L] And we got that. [chuckles]
[Jen] I sat in that. That was awesome. I want to take that home.
[Dan L] Actually, there's a picture of you and I in it, and I look really awful.
I really remember being like, "Damn, I missed a good photo op."
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan L] It was a terrible angle for me.
[Jen] Hey, it's a set. Everyone's sweaty and ugly on set except for the actors.
But this set was really one of the first ones we chose, wasn't it?
Because of the amazing color inside these buildings, which was all practical.
[Dan L] And it's pretty creepy and uncanny
how these scenes are mirroring what's going on
with, you know, the tragedies that are going on in the world right now, with...
- [Jen] It is a bit... - [Dan L] ...kids being rounded up
- by the government. - [Jen] Again, this...
This was written a while ago, years ago.
[Dan L] The book was written many years ago,
and the scripts were written many years before,
but it is chilling when you see sort of a dystopian future become real.
- [Jen] Right. - [Dan L] As your movie's coming out.
[Jen] But those...
Something to note is, in that scene where the kids are walking through
the barbed wire fencing and the chain link little enclosures,
all the color in there was one of the big things
that I got really excited about when we walked into this location,
'cause there's this rose, and this beautiful green
and it's the most beautiful prison you could imagine.
- [Dan L] You get that contrast of... - [Jen] Yeah.
- [Dan L] ...nature, and this... - [Jen] So it's not depressing.
There's always color, and Kramer Morgenthau, the DP,
was very much intent on colors.
One of the first things we talked about was trying to get color into the movie.
And so, even in a room like this, which should be just sterile and white,
we put this mint green and little colors everywhere so it doesn't feel drab.
[Dan L] Speaking of colors, we spent a lot of time figuring out that color pyramid.
A lot of things got flipped and flopped, who's most powerful.
[Jen] Yeah. I think the fact that we don't notice might be a good thing!
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan C] Yeah.
Poor... Poor Björn had to redo that pyramid how many times?
[Dan L] Our visual effects supervisor, yes. Many times.
"Who's more powerful? If an orange is more powerful than a red, then..."
[indistinct shouting and grunting]
[Jen] These guys were awesome.
- I wanted one of those outfits so bad. - [Dan L] Yes, that was a big victory,
the wardrobe on the soldiers.
[Jen] Yeah, 'cause it's... accurate, but not accurate.
- [Dan L] Yes. - [Jen] It's not slavishly accurate.
It's a kind of slight feature.
[Dan L] Yeah. It's a real military uniform with some slight tweaks
to make it feel more Orwellian and scarier.
[Jen] One of things that's important is trying to get the look
of a near, possible future...
- [Dan C] Yeah. - [Jen] ...rather than something far.
- [Dan L] Mm-hmm. - [Jen] And I'm a real geek as far
as military, tech and weaponry.
- [Dan L] Yes, you love that stuff. - [Jen] I do. I really do.
[Dan L] One of my favorite memories in prep is you testing the flame thrower.
- [Jen laughs] I did. - [Dan L] Yeah.
- You were good at it. - [Jen] That thing had a kick.
I enjoyed that a little too much, I think.
But that was fun. That was really fun, and that thing is hot.
- [Dan L] Yeah, one would think. - [Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] Maybe Elon Musk figured it out with his that it's no longer hot, but...
These shots are really chilling, because you're starting to see images in the news
that are so uncannily similar.
- [Jen] Yeah, and they get... - [Dan L] Someone sent me a picture,
and I thought, "Oh my God, that's our movie."
And then I realized, "Wait a minute. That's real."
[Jen] And again, this was all completely unintentional,
because a couple of years ago, when we were thinking up this thing,
we were thinking, "Oh, this is science fiction."
You don't have to worry about science fiction so much.
- "Oh, it's so unlikely to happen." - [Dan L] Right.
- And yet it did. - [Jen] And yet it does.
[guard] Hey! Let's go! Move!
[Jen] This is our first shot of Ruby as an adult.
- [Jen] And... - [Dan L] Oh, that's right. Yes.
- [Jen] Yes, our very first shot. - [Dan L] In our famed shoe factory.
[Jen] Wanted to make sure that you see her
as a person suffering through all this stuff.
And Wade.
- [Dan L] Yes, our beloved Captain. - [Jen] Wade, one of the sweetest,
most wonderful guys in the world.
- [Dan C] You'd never know in this scene. - [Dan L] In person.
- [Jen] In person. - [Dan L] But on se...
He got into this character. He was amazing.
[Jen] He's bloody intimidating on screen, but he's such a sweetheart.
[Dan L] He really is.
[Jen] And he would bring his fiddle on set.
- [Dan L] Was that his? - [Jen] Yeah, no, Amandla had one.
[Dan L] I remember he had a guitar, because I remember during the night shoots
I would try to catch a nap, and I'd hear someone playing a guitar,
and it would be driving me crazy, and I realized it was Wade.
[Jen] Well, Wade was playing guitar...
- [Dan L] He was good. - [Jen] ...and he also had a fiddle,
and Amandla had a violin, and in between takes,
- everybody was playing on stuff. - [Dan L] I remember the campfire...
Yeah, when we were in the woods, everyone playing along.
I didn't realize the fiddle came from Wade,
- but it makes sense. - [Jen] Yeah.
When we're in that train house scene later in the movie, he...
It was his last day, and he showed up with a fiddle,
and he was just playing for everybody,
- as part of his... - [Dan L] And he had wrapped weeks earlier.
- [Jen] Yeah. [laughs] - [Dan L] Like, "Wade, you're here?"
[Jen] Oh, man.
And again, this is supposed to be
this dystopian horrible, you know, prison shoe factory,
but look how pretty it is through the windows
- and the way the mist is coming through. - [Dan L] I remember walking onto the set,
and Kramer did such a great job, our DP,
with lighting this, and Russell, with the set design.
It was really wonder... Remember it was so good that we thought,
- "Wow, we're only shooting one day here?" - [Jen] Yeah, "Can we do more?"
[Dan L] I remember you were trying to figure out what else we could shoot there,
but it really is hard to...
[Jen] It's one scene, so you really can't go back there, but man...
[Dan L] We were going to have this white noise sound test in the shoe factory,
- but it just... - [Jen] Oh, that's right.
[Dan L] You and I had a lot of spirited debates about that,
whether it could work or not.
[Jen] We ended up shooting it outside, but I was thinking about it.
I even aborted the whole scene as if it continued on
- in the shoe factory. - [Dan L] Yeah. I blame myself.
[Jen] If all those things were...
If we had more time, maybe we should've done it both ways.
- [Dan L] Right. - [Jen] But we didn't.
[Cate] Ruby, can you hear me?
[Jen] Now, this is Mandy's first shot in the movie.
You're gonna be fine, Ruby.
[Jen] As the face of humanity and warmth of the resistance organization.
Do you know where you are?
[Jen] This was a fun set.
Again, this was all stuff that was there at that location.
Not the hospital beds, but the metal cage walls and all that stuff.
- [Dan L] Yeah, the chain-link fence walls. - [Dan C] The ambiance was waiting for you.
- This was a real find, this location. - [Jen] Yeah. Such a beautiful place.
I almost wanted to move in there. It was great. But it was such a cool...
- [Dan L] Really? - [Jen] No. Not really.
- [Dan L] Yeah. It was pretty... - [Jen] It was gnarly.
[Dan L] Just like, right out of a dystopia movie.
- [Jen] It was... - [Dan L] It used to be an air base?
...Or it was a military base? - [Jen] I think it was the military surplus
because it was right next to a train station.
[Dan L] Right. Lot of trains in Atlanta.
- [Jen] A lot of trains. - [Dan L] Yep.
[Jen] And having to film between trains, planes and automobiles was...
[Dan L] We actually lucked out.
I've worked on other films where you have to yell cut because of trains.
[Jen] Right. But the lights were moved in.
Russell put those lights up there so that we could have some retro feel to it,
but those steel enclosures were either moved from places elsewhere
in this building or found to look exactly like what was already there.
[Dan L] We didn't talk about the...
How hard it was to get the prison outfits, the coloring right,
what shade of green should it be, because some were too lime green
and some were too dark, and it took a lot of work.
[Jen] Yeah, these are all scrubs that you can buy online,
- because they're actual scrubs. - [Dan L] That was a smart idea
that we should go with what would really happen,
although now, I wonder what really happened, but... Um... Uh...
Yes, off-the-rack.
- [Jen] Off-the-rack, distressed. - [Dan L] But dyed.
[Jen] And so you can feel that use,
but pretty much that's what they use in juvenile detention centers.
And try to, again, keep that grounded, real feel to the movie.
[Dan L] What I love about this scene is this is one of those scenes
that really came together in post, that initially it wasn't a timed breakout,
- it was a much slower-paced scene. - [Dan C] Yeah.
[Dan L] And our editor, Dean Zimmerman,
had the brilliant idea of, "Make it feel like a prison break
with alarms going off, and...
[Jen] The fact he put that sound of the alarm in the background
was the thing that really gave it. a bit of a drive.
[Dan L] It changed everything. Re-cut it, and it gave urgency to a scene...
that we didn't quite have in the earlier cuts.
[Jen] One of the big pluses of this whole location was Russell really pushed
to get those lights on the buildings back there, those diagonal light bars.
It makes the whole place look so cool. [laughs]
Hey, I got Dr. Rogers with me.
[Jen] And Wade was such a trooper. This is cold rain.
This is water that's just flowing for hours,
- drenching him through his outfit. - [Dan L] That guy never complained once.
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan L] He is a man's man.
[Jen] And I'd go up to him and say, "Wade, do you need a blanket?
Do you need to just dry off for a second between setups?"
He's like, "Nope, I'm fine." And he was literally shaking.
He did not look fine, but he's like oh, Navy SEAL man.
I mean, he was gonna man his way through it.
[Dan L] Stayed in character while we were all huddled under a tent. [chuckles]
- [Jen] Yeah, dealing with the mosquitos. - [Dan C] Yeah, he was great in this scene.
[Jen] He was really great.
[Dan L] Remember he wanted to do a version where he had his gun out?
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan L] He wanted to go full commando...
- [Jen] We actually shot it that way. - [Dan L] Did we do a take with that?
- [Jen] Yeah. We did a few takes. - [Dan L] It didn't work.
We tried a couple, and it didn't work, and then we...
[Jen] Yeah, it was more menacing for him not to have it.
Just the gesture of him reaching for it was enough to...
[Dan L] Another thing we can talk about was the eye glow which is something
you championed early on, and I think a lot of us were like,
- "That's not going to work." - [Dan C] We were skeptics.
[Dan L] "Maybe Jen will forget about that, we won't do that, and..."
[Jen] I would not forget about it.
- [Dan L] You didn't forget about it... - [Jen] I am a hardcore...
[Dan L] ...and thankfully you pressed on it, and it really works.
[Jen] I'm an eye freak. I love weird effects on eyes.
I guess it's, like, that anime background.
[Dan C] Right.
[Jen] And I just love weird stuff happening with eyes.
[Dan L] By the way, this is, again, more of a different take
- on a dystopian future... - [Dan C] Yeah.
[Dan L] ...where it's the absence of things.
Not destruction, but the absence of children, and...
[Dan C] Not a muted palette.
It's actually very green and optimistic outside.
It's just a lack of children.
- [Dan L] And no zombies. - [Dan C] No zombies.
- [Dan L] Look at those cows. - [Dan C] Despite our asking for them.
[Jen] A lot of this footage of the interior of the car
was on the day when me and Kramer
were kind of, you know, pissed off and full of piss and vinegar,
and we said, "We're gonna get these shots!"
And he jumped in that little car, that little physical car.
I jumped in the back, and he shot that stuff hanging out the window! [laughs]
[Dan L] That's right. I also love... We're not there yet.
When he got on that golf cart and just started shooting stuff
hanging off the back of it when we...
- [Jen] Oh, yeah. - [Dan L] We'll get there a bit later.
[Jen] That was that golden hour stuff.
Like, to try to get it that beautiful light wherever we could.
It certainly is beautiful stuff. And then this whole ride through,
we had other footage of really dystopian wrecked buildings
- and stuff like that. - [Dan L] Yeah.
[Jen] Some really beautiful shots,
but ultimately, it made it seem too destroyed.
[Dan L] Right, because what this was... The world didn't go away.
I mean, there are no children, and the future is obviously in question,
but parents, older people were still alive and so, maybe the economy crashed,
but buildings still stood, and people still went about their lives.
[Dan C] I think we're running on the idea that this is six years later,
and not 60, you know?
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan C] This is still a very near future.
[Dan L] The only people that were very distressed were babysitters
because they were all out of work.
- [Jen] Oh, man. - [Dan L] Nannies took a hit.
[Jen] I've got to say, though, I love the beautiful destruction
of completely destroyed buildings and stuff.
That'd be cool to do at some point.
- [Dan L] We'll do that in the sequel. - [Jen] Okay. Total destruction. [laughs]
I love Patina. That's what it is. Patina.
Those like you are...
[Dan L] But I do remember early days when you talked...
Remember, we almost shot this movie in the fall-winter,
but it was very important for you to have the foliage and the green and the life
to feel different.
[Dan C] I remember the meeting at Fox where we were gonna rush into production,
and they said, "How do you feel about...
waiting, like, six more months," something like that?
[Dan L] Yeah, which is a producer's nightmare, because a lot could go wrong.
[Jen] I saw you guys' faces.
Your faces looked pale when they suggested pushing it...
- [Dan L] What happens is suddenly... - [Dan C] I could see Dan tense up,
feeling, "That's six months of any problem that could derail the movie."
[Dan L] Yeah, this movie vanishing,
Jen taking another movie, the actors not being available.
[Dan C] But it was the right move for the look of the movie.
[Jen] Yeah, because we would have had a very brown movie
with brown, leafless trees...
[Dan C] Yep.
[Jen] ...and it just worked out
to get the beautiful foliage and the color this way.
[Dan C] This is Mark O'Brien.
[Dan L] Our good friend and has been in a few movies of 21 Laps,
- and he always comes through. - [Dan C] Yeah.
[Dan L] Personally... He personally picked that jacket for himself.
He was shown some options, and he liked that one.
[Jen] Did he take it home?
[Dan L] No, he probably didn't. Although actually, I don't know.
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan L] I'm gonna call him.
...soap, some other things, a bathroom...
[Jen] I think there was a boring time while we were setting up
some stuff in this area, and Amandla got bored
and took one of the set dressing little mini pink bikes
and was riding around in the road!
- [Dan L] Oh, yeah. That's right. - [Jen laughs]
[Dan L] That's also... That creepy gas station is where I got bit
by some strange bug.
[Jen] Yeah, it was like some predator bug. You had three bite marks like a triangle.
[Dan L] I know, and two different spots, and they lasted for about three months.
[Jen] We thought maybe you were gonna get flesh-eating bacteria
and die on us or something.
[Dan L] I know. I was pretty sure it was the end.
And that, by the way, is not much different than
what this convenient mart looked like in real life. It was a weird...
- [Jen laughs] It looked nicer than that. - [Dan L] We didn't do much to distress it.
[Dan C] We happened upon some good, ready locations, is what it sounds like.
[Dan L] Yeah, this was another find. Um...
- [Jen] It's so awesome. - [Dan L] Even though it was very far away,
part of you is like, "This looks perfect for the movie."
The other part is, "God, I'm gonna be stuck in traffic for a really long time.
Does it have to look this good? Maybe we could do it closer."
[Jen] This was far, but I think what got me on this location
was the color of the refrigerator units.
[Dan L] That's usually what is the key thing...
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan L] ...for a shoot.
That's where your eye went.
This is our first shot with Miya, who was...
- [Jen] Miya! - [Dan L] ...the most awesome person ever.
[Jen] Miya is such a sweetheart.
She is so, like, genuinely cute, not like put-on cute.
[Dan C] Yeah.
So outgoing.
- [Jen] She chats a lot. - [Dan L] And I love... I gotta say, her...
[Dan C] And yet, you wouldn't know that with a character that never speaks.
- [Jen] No. She never speaks. - [Dan L] I love her...
And we owe it to you, Jen. I love her costume, because that really was...
You know, that big hooded sweatshirt with the yellow gloves and the military boots
was such an iconic look.
- [Jen] Yeah, that was fun. - [Dan L] I think she'll be a fan favorite,
I really do.
[Jen] I really think she's so, so cool,
and in the book, it went a lot more into what her back story was,
and I know she has a new book that's all about her.
- So... - [Dan L] Spoiler alert.
- [Jen] Well... - [Dan I laughs] Yeah, no, I know. Um...
- [Dan C] Here come Harris and Skylan. - [Jen] The first time we see the guys.
[Dan L] The dream team's together for the first time.
[Jen] They're together for the very first time in the van.
The full van kids scene.
[Dan L] Russell did a great job, our production designer,
with the interior of the van. We really wanted it to feel like
a home away from home.
- The kids live there. - [Dan C] Yep.
[Dan L] It's where they learn, eat, sleep.
[Jen] They would hang out in this van in between takes
simply 'cause it was convenient and comfy,
- and they had all their stuff in there. - [Dan L] You know, the van,
we shipped it out to LA, we have it. We should take it to the premiere.
[Jen] Yeah. We should just park it out there. Why not.
They wanted to take it home.
[Dan L] I bet.
[Jen] If we had left everyone alone, I think all this stuff
- would've disappeared. - [Dan I chuckles]
[Jen] 'Cause everybody wanted to take the van with them.
But super comfy, and all the stuff in the back,
and drawings, and little corners for everyone's little...
- [Dan L] It felt lived in. - [Jen] ...specialization.
- No strays! - Wait. I'll handle this.
[Jen] And Amandla had just learned how to drive
when she did this movie, didn't she?
[Dan C] Which works out well,
'cause she's not supposed to be a good driver, and she pulled it off.
Yeah, remember we were gonna get to the motel scene?
It was a little nerve-racking to get her to stop in the right spot,
- because she was... - [Jen] It's also a huge van.
[Dan L] Yes. That, too.
- ...in a beat-up blue minivan. - That's no way to talk about Betty.
- [Jen] Skylan was so good in this too. - [Dan C] Yeah.
[Jen] I really loved what he did with the character,
because Chubs was probably one of the latest adjustments that we did.
- His character was the hardest to find. - [Dan L] Yeah... There was a draft
where his character just got that sense of humor,
and a real life and spark to him, and a real personality,
and uh...
- Skylan just killed it. - [Dan C] Yeah. He really nailed it.
[Dan L] Here comes a very fast gold car.
[Jen] Very first shot of Lady Jane.
It's Lady Jane!
[Jen] Gwendoline was cool. It was interesting,
trying to find her look, 'cause...
[Dan L] Yeah, remember we had almost a flannel,
- Seattle look for her for a while? - [Jen] Yeah, we went full hillbilly.
- [Dan L] And a hunter look. - [Jen] Yeah, hunter-hillbilly look.
[Dan L] Red vest.
- And then we went biker. - [Jen] It didn't suit her at all.
- [Dan L] No. - [Jen] The hunter-hillbilly look.
[Dan L] One of the nicest people you'll ever meet.
- [Jen] She sure is. - [Dan L] With a great laugh.
[Jen] I think the first time I met her,
first of all, I was amazed I was meeting her.
[Dan L] I think we're all huge Game of Thrones fans.
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan L] And yeah, she was so cool.
She was not in the movie much, but great having her there.
[Jen] But she drove in this car. There's a guy on the roof of the car.
The pod drivers are up there driving.
The stunt guys are driving, but the actor's in the car
in these shots, they're not in some green-screen studio.
[Dan L] No.
For everyone watching, basically, there was a little pod that sits on top
of these cars where you have a stunt man driving the actual car
and then you erase it in post with visual effects.
You just wipe it out so you don't see them so it looks just like a regular car.
[Jen] But the actor, though, is in the car through the movements of this.
[Dan L] Yeah, they're getting banged around.
[Jen] They're feeling the impact and the Gs and all this stuff.
[Dan L] I remember in the...
There was great outtakes with Mandy and with Mark just having a blast.
The banter between them in between takes was hilarious.
[Jen] Yeah.
And here, Harris gets to lean out the back of the car.
He is in full body harness here.
This car is booking. Like, on the road, moving fast, for reals.
And he is heavily strapped in.
- [Dan L] Yes, which is a good thing. - [Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] Safety first.
- [Jen] But he had such fun doing this. - [Dan L] Yeah.
[Jen] We're going up and down the road, him hanging out the back of this van!
[laughs]
Us yelling orders through the intercom.
[Dan L] I'm impressed that Chubs can hold him as he leans out the...
- [Jen] Arm strength. - [Dan L] Yeah.
That is his super ability, his great grip.
- [Jen] But Jack Gill, he is of course... - [Dan L] Our stunt coordinator, great guy.
[Jen] ...our stunt extraordinaire and Fast and Furious vet.
- [Dan L] Yeah, this was easy for him. - [Jen] Yeah, this was small beans I guess.
[laughs] But still, he's so good, and watching...
[Dan L] His brother was on top one of the cars.
[Jen] Yeah. I think he was on top of Lady Jane's car.
[Dan L] Do you remember how many meetings we had about the tree?
[Jen] Oh my gosh. We had so many meetings about that tree.
[Dan L] Practical tree, visual effects.
[Jen] The thing that seems the simplest,
"throw a tree," is really hard, because a tree is bloody heavy.
And trying to find a real tree was ten times harder than finding a fake tree.
[Dan L] A lot of meetings
about the tree.
[Jen] We did use a real tree, but it was embellished.
[Dan L] Remember how cold it was this day?
It was warm in Atlanta, but we went a couple hours north
and it was very cold that day.
[Jen] This scene was actually done fairly early on.
- [Dan L] But this was added later. - [Jen] This is a little tiny pickup shot.
[Dan C] This scene was a late addition, this exact moment.
- [Jen] That little moment was... - [Dan L] But the rest of it,
everything outside the van is...
[Jen] This was on the very first week of shoot, like day three,
and on this beautiful country road with cows meandering around. [chuckles]
And it was freezing.
- It was cold. - [Dan L] It was odd.
[Dan C] Just when you think you escape the trains, the cows show up.
What's interesting about Harris is that we cast him off his audition,
and he had starred in a movie called Beach Rats that had gone to a festival,
but we hadn't seen it yet.
And then we saw the movie after casting him...
[Dan L] And then felt really smart,
- because he was so good in it. - [Dan C] He's incredible in Beach Rats.
[Jen] Oh, you could tell, even in this very casual audition tape
that he did, very casual, like, you know,
this is a read that agents send you, like, "This person exists."
He was amazing just in that casual read.
- [Dan L] Yeah. You knew he was special. - [Jen] He wasn't even trying.
You should come with us.
[Dan L] Jen was the unsung hero of this scene.
Jen actually did take a bite of a Twinkie and ate it
- just to see what a Twinkie tastes like. - [Jen] I did, and I'm still alive.
No. It was actually really good. I really loved Twinkies when I was a kid,
but there was a lot of Twinkies in this set.
- A lot. - [Dan L] And pickles.
[Jen] We went through boxes and boxes of pickles.
Oh my gosh. I completely forgot about that!
- [Dan L] Yeah. - [Jen] That was Kramer, right?
- Kramer and... - [Dan L] And our script supervisor.
[Jen] So, our script supervisor and Kramer, the DP,
had this ongoing pickle feud where
they would sneak these gigantic, awful, disgusting-looking dill pickles
- in a plastic... - [Dan L] Well to be fair, they were
on craft services, individually bagged and yes,
Steve Gehrke, our script supervisor extraordinaire, and Kramer
had an ongoing battle of who could stash pickles and...
[Jen] And you'd find them in the side pocket of your chair or like...
- [Dan L] Your backpack. - [Jen] In your backpack.
[Dan L] I remember that, the last day of shooting,
Steve put it on Kramer's windshield wipers.
He hollowed the pickles out and put them over each windshield wiper.
[Jen] It kept going.
Apparently, someone put a pickle in Kramer's bag and he got to the airport.
[Dan L] That's right, and they had to check it.
- [Jen] He got to the airport and... - [Dan L] It's like Spinal Tap.
[Dan C laughs] Security...
[Jen laughs] Security found this giant pickle!
- [Dan L] It's fitting. - [Jen laughs]
[Dan C] One of the great four shots of the movie there.
[Dan L] Yeah.
[Jen] Oh, man, that...
[Dan C] Also just wanted to say that the slicing of the Twinkie...
I just love in this movie when the powers are used casually
as kind of a gesture, whether it's that,
- or unhooking the tire... - [Dan L] Right, not a big effect, yeah.
[Dan C] Or during later, when he drags her to dance. Just a really, you know...
- [Jen] It's natural. - [Dan C] Yeah, it's natural,
and it's not usually how you see powers used
in these kind of films, and it's a nice approach.
[Dan L] This is another scene that we redid.
We did very minimal reshoots on this movie.
I think just a couple of days. And this was just one scene
that we did to add a little bit more emotion
and a little bit more of a trajectory to the relationship.
- [Jen] A little bite. A little pushback. - [Dan L] Yeah, a little... Yeah.
[Jen] Not a lot, but just a little, so you can see them...
[Dan L] Enough to show that that's not an easy relationship where they...
[Dan C] Are seeing where they're both coming from.
- [Dan L] Yeah. - [Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] And how passionate he is about the league.
Where she's thinking, possibly, they may be good,
he's had a different experience.
[Jen] That's a whole process of when you're trying to make a relationship
- progress in a natural way... - [Dan C] Yeah.
[Jen] ...and you find these little areas where you have to adjust it.
Like, originally, this scene was just very, very soft.
He was gentle and nice, and everyone was nice to each other.
- [Dan C] Too nice, yeah. - [Jen] Too nice.
Everyone was so nice that there was nowhere for them to go.
[Dan C] Right, and so the scenes that follow this
really benefit from the warmness
between them, because you feel like they've come over something.
- Overcome something. - [Jen] Yeah.
They just sort of laid there, as moments go.
It didn't have any momentum. It didn't have any sense of progress.
- [Dan L] Mm-hmm. - [Dan C] Something also,
starting with this scene, and reshooting it, and then kind of
exploring the previous scene with them outside with the Twinkie, was just getting
across the information about the league
and the back story about it
'cause there's a lot to get across and you don't want to feel like...
an information dump which is always a problem.
So really kind of methodically giving it piece by piece which, in the end
- I think we did a really good job with. - [Dan L] But more importantly,
we need to talk about Wade and his intimidation factor
- in the scene, and... - [Jen] Wade is so, like... He goes there.
- He does. - [Dan L] He's great. I'd be afraid to...
I remember we put in that foam wall.
What's behind our doctor actor is a foam wall,
because we were worried about him getting slammed into it.
[Jen] It ended up being perfectly fine, but still...
[Dan L] This was a great moment, just adding this hint of what are the reds.
[Jen] I love the fact that all the reds we really focus on are little.
[Dan L] Yeah.
- There's nothing scarier than... - [Jen] I love dangerous little kids.
They're far more scary than dangerous adults, right?
[Dan L] I love that one liner. We had a lot of versions of it, but it was funny.
This is the scene where we were trying to get Amandla
to stop this giant hulking old van on the right spot.
- [Jen] On a wet pavement. - [Dan L] On a wet pavement.
[Dan C] But just to go back to that previous scene too,
that was something that we brought in late, and it really brought...
You know, that establishes that there is a real threat chasing them
for the rest of the movie.
[Jen] It also is a way of showing a taste of what the reds...
- Again, it helps you remember... - [Dan L] A little grounding, remembering
- where she came from, and... - [Jen] Where she wants to go.
[Dan L] Right, what she wants to get back to.
[young Ruby] Don't worry
Nothing can take me away from you.
[Dan L] This is one of my favorite scenes and also... I mean, I don't...
It's about to come up, and, um...
- [Jen] The socks. - [Dan L] It was a big scene in the book.
I mean, one great thing about our screenwriter, Chad Hodge
is he had a very good relationship with author Alexandra Bracken,
and occasionally, we'd say, "Well, we got to get rid of this or..."
and he'd be like, "No, no, no, that's a fan favorite."
[Dan C] Yeah, he had, like, a Wikipedia knowledge of what the must-haves were.
[Dan L] Um... And the sock scene was key. In fact, I gave those socks to Alexandra.
- She visited the set that day, and... - [Jen] Yeah. Alex has the socks.
[Dan L] She has the set socks.
Which she immediately then sold on eBay.
- [Dan C laughs] - [Jen] They're clean, new socks.
They haven't been worn.
[Dan C] And again, to go to this scene when we were talking earlier
about having to kind of bring in conflict between them,
that makes the scene now an olive branch, whereas without it, it's not.
It's just another tender moment.
[Dan L] And another nice thing too was Skylan's just...
You know, in a movie that can be heavy and dramatic,
his moments of humor really work,
and always got a huge laugh when we screened the movie,
and it just was a really nice balance,
so when the movie felt a little heavy, we could just see that these are kids.
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan C] And what's so great
about Skylan too, I mean, I think often, when you see a team dynamic,
there's the funny kid, but he... You really just...
Chubs feels like a very real person.
[Dan L] Yeah, he's not a one-line, like, you cast a comedian.
- He's a really talented actor. - [Dan C] Been with these kids for a while.
[Jen] Also, you notice back then the guys had color-coded blankets?
That's a little Easter egg for people.
[Dan L] Jen, wanna talk about this scene? This was always a favorite moment.
I remember when you storyboarded it. It was so beautiful.
[Jen] This scene was... Originally Amandla, Ruby's character, was not in this.
It was pure flashback in the original draft,
and it was just mainly focused on the guys and what they were going through,
and I really felt that seeing her visually in the scene
- gave sort of a dreamy quality to it. - [Dan C] It was great.
[Dan L] What I love about this scene is just the theme of our movie
about fighting back, about not accepting being oppressed or beaten down,
that you can fight back,
you can use your powers, your abilities, to fight back and win,
and that we do have to see people rise up in real life, and...
Uh... And... And...
take on, you know, the establishment, and I think this is a really timely movie.
[Jen] This shot coming up kills me.
When we shot it, I literally was doing a little happy dance
when Miya was looking back at camera and stuff, because it's so sweet.
[Dan L] That shot, it always felt like a very iconic trailer shot.
[Jen] Yeah.
I was playing music in my headpiece, you know, watching this.
[Dan L] What was the music? The score?
- No. Obviously, we didn't have it. - [Jen] No. We didn't have score back then.
It was just basically this weird electronic...
- [Dan L] Was it Britney Spears? - [Jen] No, it wasn't.
No, it was definitely. No, it wasn't.
- It was atmospheric, weird European stuff. - [Dan C] Nice.
[Jen laughs]
Are you okay, Zu?
He shot that entire scene over-cranked,
so in real life, you see everybody running around looking completely normal,
but then to see it slow motion,
we'd watched it played back on the little monitors.
[Dan L] I remember there was a big conversation, because it was...
In the script,
it was a little flashback, but when you boarded it out and budgeted,
- it was a big shoot. - [Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] So, it's a lesson when you look at a script and there's, like, three lines
and it's a flashback, and you think, "Oh, that's easy,"
but sometimes, it's a full day shoot.
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan L] And you get a little beat.
I'm not a fancy dress kind of girl.
[Dan L] Another great Miya moment.
Remember we didn't have enough letters to peel off?
So, we couldn't really show him scraping off letters,
- because there was one... - [Jen] Kept having to put them back on.
[Dan L] A little mishap. They did not bring enough letters.
No, no. It's, uh...
[Jen] Ooh! Ooh...
It's been a while since I've seen...
[Jen] I just dropped something.
[Liam] Or anyone in a dress.
I feel like I should ask you to prom or something.
[Dan L] This was a nice little bit of banter and actually is a nice set up...
for the ending, when she and he are alone.
I won't give the spoiler yet. [chuckles]
I'll assume people listening to this have seen the movie.
[Jen] Kramer is so snaky as a visualist
that he would compose these shots to have that sunburst on the van behind the kids.
[Dan L] Remember he... And what was great about Kramer
is he would always beg for just one shot where he could do something interesting...
- [Jen] He would say... - [Dan L] Something special on his own,
and it was always worth it.
- He got some really beautiful shots... - [Jen] He did.
[Dan L] ...that were just all him just saying, "Let me try something."
[Jen] He would just lean in and say, "I got a surprise for you".
- [Dan L] Yeah. - [Jen] And then he'd do something,
and I'd be like, "Oh, man that's crazy!"
[Dan L] Yeah, he's definitely someone we'd love to work with again.
[Jen] Definitely.
[Dan L] Notice that we're not really peeling letters off,
because we didn't have enough.
- [Jen] Don't ruin the scene! - [Dan L] Big studio movie!
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan I ] Big studio movie,
but we didn't have enough letters.
[Jen] We had, like, what, three or four sets of letters?
No, we had like ten sets of letters,
- but we had, like, ten shots. - [Dan L] Yeah.
And this was a scene that got changed.
It's exactly how it was, but in post, it took on a different meaning
because it was just a couple of parents leaving, and...
I don't know if it was you or Dean had the idea to make it more of a threat...
- [Jen] It was Dean. Yeah. - [Dan L] ...that they were skip tracers.
[Jen] And it allows for a little bit of a sense of the world.
One thing that was interesting about this hotel
- is it was an occupied hotel at the time. - [Dan L] Oh, I remember. That was... Yeah.
[Jen] And there were people looking out the window.
We'd have to tell them, "Could you not look out the window?
- Because you're in the shot." - [Dan L] Yeah.
I remember that day we got for craft services, they brought Italian ices,
which I think is probably the most important story we could tell for this.
[Jen] Italian ices were very nice.
[Dan L] Yeah, they were delicious because it was hot.
[Jen] Those are my drawings. I'm so proud.
I'm so proud.
[Dan L] You made it Jen. You got your drawing in the movie.
[Jen] I made it. I made my big break. I've got drawings in the movie.
- But... - [Dan L] And this was another great...
What we loved about the script is that the friendship between the four of them
is really what this movie is about. Um...
And this was a real abandoned mall in Atlanta, that little...
Dan, can I mention what else was just recent? Okay.
We'll erase that bit. But...
[Jen] This actually had a much bigger set up.
We had to cut a lot of it out.
We had Chuck, the Czechoslovakian wolf dog in this scene.
- [Dan L] He's still in it. - [Dan C] I think he's still in it.
[Dan L] Yeah, no, he...
[Jen] But there was more of him than... He was an awesome dog.
- [Dan C] No one told Chuck he was cut. - [Dan L] Wait, did we just talk over it?
Yeah, he was in it a little bit. He was a beautiful wolf dog.
And this was another just great moment.
Kids being kids and forgetting all the dangers in the world.
Things they're on the run from and running to that they can have a moment together.
[Jen] And the pink bicycle that Ruby is...
[Dan L] And this was all improvised a lot.
All the playing around. They told them to have fun, and they were able to do it.
[Jen] That pink bike that she rides right there is the one that we actually had
- on the side of the road. - [Dan L] At the gas station?
So, she had a chance to practice.
[Jen] Yeah, and I said, "Make sure we have it in the mall".
So we brought it in. It was great.
[Dan L] Watership Down book.
[Jen] And look at the bokeh on the back of that shot.
We shot this entire film in anamorphic, which was actually very challenging,
'cause of all the special effects involved.
The distortion is complicated for a lot of VFX.
But it gives this warm, sort of amazingly filmic look to the movie.
And a little nostalgic.
And it gives that sort of beautiful bokeh on the back of those shots.
[Dan L] Now, this shot was done with old-school wiring.
Yanking them up and down.
[Jen] They were such troopers during this, because we were yanking them up and down,
up and down, floor to ceiling, all day.
- [Dan L] It doesn't feel good. - [Jen] It does not feel good.
[Dan L] Although we constantly checked with them to make sure they were okay.
And they were really... They're good troopers.
[Jen] They're indestructible 18-year-olds or 19-year-olds.
And I think later, Harris said how, like...
he was sore from being held up in the air.
- [Dan L] Those harnesses don't feel great. - [Jen] They do not feel great.
[Dan L] And this is our human bowling pin scene.
[Jen] We had all this cool camera rig set up in this.
We had this sort of aerial cam going on, on a track.
We had... I think, one of the...
[Dan L] Am I crazy? Even though we were inside, this was a night shoot?
I feel like I just remember... Oh, we were there late.
[Jen] It was a day shoot. It's a night shoot...
Well, it's supposed to be set at night, but we shot it during the day,
because we're dealing with the constraints of shooting kids.
- [Dan L] Oh, right. - [Jen] At certain times of the day.
- A lot of the cast was younger. - [Dan L] These were all our...
The other kids were all local casting, right?
[Jen] A lot of them were, but a lot of them weren't.
I mean, we actually lucked out with who was available when and where.
- And you can sleep here, tonight. - What?
But only tonight.
[Dan L] I remember we had to do a very quick
wardrobe adjustment on their stuff
- like seconds before shooting. - [Jen] Seconds.
[Dan L] I remember they came to set with things that didn't look quite right,
- and we had to race to fix it. - [Jen] It literally was in the hallway.
[Dan L] Yeah, it was literally in the hallway.
And it's hard to comment on an actors' clothing,
'cause you don't want them to take it personally.
[Jen] That's not their issue. It's just a matter of on the day,
it doesn't look right on set, you got to change stuff.
Again, the color.
It's an abandoned mall.
It's at night. It could have been really shabby.
But everywhere we could try and find color, we'd put it in there.
The fact that the little camp fire light around them
puts on this red-orange glow...
Do you think that we've survived...
[Jen] Dystopia never look so pretty.
[Ruby] Look, we're not just a bunch of dead weight.
[Jen] And we didn't have a lot of time in the mall,
because we were also setting up a lot of the stunt scenes
- for the second unit at the same time. - [Dan L] Right.
[Jen] We had to book through a lot of the shots of this.
And so, one of the things that Kramer came up with was...
[Dan L] And it was odd, 'cause...
I remember shooting, we were in the bottom level of this mall,
abandoned mall, so you could never really tell if it was night or day,
- you just felt just... - [Jen] Yeah, but you had to book anyway.
You only had a certain amount of time.
And Kramer was coming up with this track system
so that we could get a lot of rotating shots,
a lot of coverage of all these people talking.
It was a nightmare in the cutting room,
because you had to cut through all these moving rotating shots.
But it allowed us to get through the day quicker.
We go to sleep.
[Dan L] I was a big fan of that hoodie. That was a big wardrobe success for us.
[Jen] That was the first... The red hoodie was the first.
This was the second.
[Dan C] I love this moment, by the way.
Having seen what happens when she... has contact. The restraint.
[Dan L] Wanting to touch him, but being afraid of it.
[Jen] A lot of it's about that visual hang time, right?
What are you doing?
[Jen] And no one's ever gonna be able to unsee that,
but that little campfire makes a little happy face in the background of that shot.
[Dan L] Is that right?
[Jen] Yeah, when he holds up the notebook and there's a little happy face.
[Dan L] Wow, I didn't even know that. Now I got to watch it again.
[Jen] Everyone in editorial was like,
"I can't unsee it now. It's there forever."
This is a scene that we really didn't have that much time to get through.
- And so it was all Steadicam. - [Dan L] Who did all those drawings?
- Was it the prop department? - [Jen] Yeah, the prop department.
[Dan L] I was really impressed with all... A lot of work, to fill it up with code.
[Jen] Oh, yeah.
I hope it all makes sense if people freeze-frame and look at it. [laughs]
- It's not like... - [Dan C] No, we double-checked.
[Dan L] Oh, it does. It all adds up. I checked.
[Dan C] What I also like about Chubs a lot, too,
is even though he is the comedic relief, he's also the skeptic.
He's the one who's the least trusting of Ruby
when they first meet her, and, um...
You know, when they get to the camp in the end, he's the same way there,
and I think it's a really interesting kind of character that way.
- [Jen] I always loved this. - [Dan C] And Skylan played it really well.
[Jen] Yeah. I love that he's smart.
But he also has that, as an actor, such a range.
And you can see that sensitivity come through in moments like this.
My dad's a police detective, so...
[Jen] Yeah, this scene was fast and furious.
But it turned out very simply.
Sometimes, when you're pushed to the limit
and you have to get things done really fast, it comes out the best,
because you don't noodle stuff.
[Dan L] I also love scenes where the main source of illumination is a flashlight.
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan C] Yep.
Police talk to each other on frequencies only they can listen to, like UHF, VHF.
[Jen] I love the fact his eyes are glowing.
- [Dan C] Yeah. - [Jen chuckles]
[Dan L] Yeah, that was a tough one to figure out, because he has...
His powers are the least external,
So we had to decide, "Okay, when is he thinking super-intelligently,
versus just thinking?"
[Dan C] How do you visualize his mind racing and his superpower happening?
It's pretty great.
[Jen] And I just love the fact it looks like an animal in the night. [chuckles]
Five, four, zero.
Okay, got it.
[Jen] This took some fancy footwork, trying to get the shot right.
[Dan L] I'm also thinking we probably did too few cranks on that recharger,
'cause I don't think it would work after two or three.
[Jen] It's not accurate!
[Dan L] If we could redo it, I would have him crank it for 20, 30 minutes.
[Jen] Reshoots! [laughs]
[Dan C] Or it's just a great radio.
[Jen] That voice is Dean Zimmerman's daughter.
- [Dan L] Is that right? - [Jen] Yeah.
[both laugh excitedly]
Charles!
[Jen] That's one of those things, like,
"Who are we gonna get to do that? Oh, let's just..."
Super cute.
But that moment when they smile at each other, I just love that.
[Chubs] So, we're gonna take the next exit, and...
[Jen] So much of this movie was happening in that van.
And you wouldn't know it, but that's all screen. They're in the van.
[Dan L] Yeah, most of the van scenes were on-stage.
Other than the big chase sequences, which were real.
[Jen] Trying to get it to look natural, but at the same time, practical.
The under bridge... We went through so many bridges trying to find a bridge.
[Dan L]I remember.
[Jen] And we went to a bridge that probably was more cool as a bridge,
but it looked so dystopianly, desperately sad.
And this bridge was actually really pretty in a nice neighborhood,
and we had to go and mess it up really badly.
[Dan C] Yeah.
[Jen] Neighbors were probably wondering why we were schlepping all this stuff.
[Dan L] We had a big rain storm. I don't know if it was this scene, or...
- [Jen] It was. - [Dan L] Yeah, where...
[Jen] I wanted one more shot, and I was, like, desperate for that one more shot,
and then there was this complete flood of just...
[Dan L] Luckily, everyone was able to jam under the bridge.
So, you had an entire cast and crew of a movie under the bridge, waiting it out.
[Jen] It was very, very fortuitous, 'cause we shot this at the same time
we shot the Lady Jane scene as well.
[Dan L] Right.
[Jen] 'Cause again, as people who make movies would know,
but people who maybe don't make movies don't know,
we have to shoot all these things out of order.
[Dan L] Yeah, I remember when I first started doing this,
that was something I just never thought of. "Oh, that's right.
You don't film a movie in the order that it's written.
You have to group shots together."
[Jen] That's something that we don't have to worry about in animation,
'cause the set is in a computer somewhere. We just open up the file.
But, yeah, going physically to a location is quite a lot of work.
[Dan L] Like this. This was our opening scene when she was younger.
[Jen] This was Amandla's first day of shoot.
[Dan L] And a tough scene too.
[Jen] Yeah, it was... Oh, yeah, this is the hardest emotional scene,
where you have to bawl and see your parents for the first time.
And it was the first day she was physically on set.
But she said it was very helpful for her,
'cause it allowed her to know kind of the stakes
of what she was going home for emotionally to be able to carry that with her.
Whenever she's thinking about her parents, she was thinking about
what was going on in this scene.
[Ruby] They lost their daughter.
[Jen] And we thought of planning this as full-on real-time, but it just...
It didn't come off right.
[Dan L] No, I feel... She's on a journey.
We couldn't put the brakes on the movie for that long.
But it feels like we got the emotion out of that.
- Seeing it more from her point of view. - [Dan C] What's great about it too is
- it's her realizing that Liam was right. - [Jen] Right.
- [Dan L] There is no going home. - [Dan C] Yeah.
[Dan L] And then this was one of those great finds.
[Jen] This was one of my favorite scenes, this shot.
- [Dan L] A DP's dream. - [Dan C] Yep.
- I love the flag in the background. - [Jen] This is such a beautiful location.
It was completely natural. All we did was bring those two little...
The flag and the two little old goalposts in the background.
And we just stuck it in the middle of this field.
Such beautiful color.
[Dan C] This to me is some of my favorite stuff from Harris in the movie here.
- Just very delicate. - [Jen] Yeah.
It was one of those dangerous things in post.
We recut this 50 thousand times, this scene,
subtly taking a frame here or a frame there out.
And every time we changed it, it died.
It got worse, and so we'd have to put it back.
[Dan C] Mm.
[Jen] Because of the subtlety, as you're talking about.
[Dan C] There's a purity to it. You can't sacrifice that.
[Dan L] We're very lucky, you never can know this early that your actors
are gonna have chemistry, but they were so great together.
[Jen] Yeah, they're friends. They're just really good friends.
That sort of warmth, the fondness, really comes through.
[Dan L] I think it was Harris' dancing on set that really won Amandla over early.
[Jen] Yeah, the first day they met, literally the first day they met,
they'd never set eyes on each other before,
and they walked into the room and they're just running a scene together
to see what they would be like together, and at one point Harris,
in between doing things or reading lines, they started dancing.
- [Dan C] Mm-hmm. - [Jen] Like, ballroom dancing together.
And it was so sort of goofy and so sweet,
- and instantly, everybody in the room... - [Dan C] Bonding, yeah.
[Jen] We felt like we were watching some rare occurrence
among wild animals in the wilderness.
Like, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe we caught that moment.
- It's so beautiful and rare." - [Dan C] This is a great moment.
Sort of a near-kiss. She wants connection,
but she's afraid of what happens when she has it.
[Jen] That's' why all those scenes were in color.
We had to cut down on how pretty that shot was
'cause it was so pretty that it was almost fairy tale pretty,
so we had to de-prettify it just a hair in color.
[Dan L] Yeah.
Till then, Zu saved some Twinkies for you.
[Dan L] We didn't get a good product deal with Twinkies, did we?
Did we get any free Twinkies out of this.
- I don't remember having it. - [Jen] I don't think we did.
I think the last day, Björn Mayer, the VFX sup, was working,
we said, "The last day you're working, you're gonna have to eat a Twinkie
for the very first time," 'cause he's German.
- [Dan L] He said he would eat one? - [Jen] He didn't eat one.
- But we wanted to. I did. - [Dan L] You did.
They're good.
...can hear frequencies that adults can't.
[Chubs grunting]
There is some good in getting old...
[Jen] This was an awesome moment.
[Liam gasping]
[Dan L] We had a lot of last-minute work on the sort of noise gun attachment.
[Jen] Again, going for the real, but also...
[Dan L] Yeah, the earlier versions looked a little too much like a toy.
[Jen] And the visual effect of the ripple in the air,
again, going for a real effect, versus...
[Dan L] 'Cause statically, it doesn't look as cool.
...considering I'm the one with the gun, I think I'm gonna pass.
[Jen] This is an actual working bridge
that had a ton of cars trafficking over it all the time.
And it was such a challenge not to get either traffic or people honking,
- because traffic was stopped. [laughs] - [Dan L] Right. We were causing traffic.
[Jen] This was a visual that, when I first heard Gwendoline
was gonna do the movie,
I was so excited about this setup, because Amandla is...
That shot right there. Amandla is a very petite person.
- [Dan C] Yeah. - [Jen] She's very petite,
and Gwendoline is very, very tall.
- And the image of her... - [Dan C] She's at least a foot taller.
[Jen] Yeah, and the image of her kneeling and Ruby being in charge of that dynamic
was just really exciting.
[Dan L] I always love this beat. It's so chilling.
[Dan C] Yep.
[Dan L] 'Cause I remember at, whether during script stage,
they're like, "Wait, so she just walks until she dies?"
- [Jen] Yep. - [Dan L] We're like, "Yeah!"
- Like, "Wow, that's pretty rough!" - [Jen] She keeps going, yeah.
[Dan C] I thought that just...
[Jen] That shows how serious she is about it.
[Dan L] Yeah, it leaves it open for the sequel
for Lady Jane to just walk into frame looking very hungry.
[Jen and Dan C laugh]
[Jen] Oh, man.
[Dan C] You know, this is the moment when...
her friends see how powerful she really is.
- [Dan L] Or realize she's an orange. - [Dan C] Yeah.
[Dan L] Until then, she was telling them she was a green.
- This is also another great scene. - [Dan C] This is great.
[Jen] This location is actually literally across a little service road
- from the scene in the meadow. - [Dan L] In the field, yeah.
[Jen] And it's the other view. It's a beautiful location. Um...
And our camera puller... Before I even talk about that,
I've cut that part out.
But this scene was when, in between takes, the kids were all sitting around
and just sort of playing instruments in between takes.
[Dan L] I remember they sent us a song. They cut, like, a little CD of it.
- [Jen] Yeah, they did. It's really great. - [Dan L] It's floating around in my car.
[Jen] I was like, "Wow, that's really great."
They're so talented as musicians, on top of everything else.
[Dan L] That light, I remember, I actually...
[Dan C] It's amazing.
[Dan L] Fracturing through the trees, was so beautiful.
[Jen] This was where they were playing music around the campfire.
It was so great. We just let them go and keep going,
and I think John Starke came over and just sort of nudged over,
he said, "So, what's going on?" [laughs]
Because as the UPM, he was making sure things moved along,
but we just loved watching them play for a while.
[Dan L] It's good bonding moments when you can get that off-camera,
where your actors really like each other.
[Jen] Yeah.
But this location was the one where...
I think one of the signs that I realized that
things were gonna be okay on set and people didn't hate me
was this location was filled with spiders and all sorts of critters underfoot.
[Dan L] Is this when they laid a mat down for you?
[Jen] They laid a little furni pad under my chair for me.
[Dan L] Everyone liked you, Jen. You never needed to worry.
- But that was a sign of... - [Jen] I was like, "Aw, that's so sweet!"
And Steve, the script supervisor's so happy,
'cause he sat right next to me, so he got the mat too.
- Let's go! - Yeah. We're not far now.
Hey, Zu!
We're packing up.
Gotta go.
[Jen] Yeah, this location was so pretty.
...try and run away again.
Again, so green.
[Dan L] And this was nice to have, a moment of some comedy,
some lightheartedness.
[Jen] And Kramer really worked to get the mist perfect.
- [Dan C] Yeah. - [Dan L] In between pranking people
with pickles, he worked very hard on the mist.
[Jen] Yes, he did.
...blaze of glory.
[Jen] And this van.
Since this is the last time we're gonna be seeing it,
it was just nice just to see it
in the sort of idyllic beautiful resting place.
- [Dan L] It's a character in the movie. - [Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] We spent a lot of time trying to figure out what song to play here.
[Dan C] This is one of the better song cues of the movie, I think, too.
- This is a great one. - [Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] I think, Dan, this is what you listen to
when you're doing Pilates, right?
[Dan C] Yep. That's where we got it from.
The old Pilates mix.
[Jen laughs]
[Dan L] And this was great. I remember just...
We kind of randomly picked up shots, and this was where Kramer, our DP,
was hanging off the back of a golf cart.
- [Jen] Trying to get a golden hour... - [Dan L] Yeah, as the sun was going down.
- [Dan C] Yeah. - [Dan L] And then we also had
some drone shots going here, and I think a drone crashed at one point.
- [Jen] Well, it landed hard but was fine. - [Dan L] Yeah.
[Dan C] It's always fun when you're trying to beat sunset capture stuff.
[Jen] That's all practical.
- [Dan C] End up with moments like that. - [Dan L] Some flares.
- [Dan C] Yeah. - [Jen] All that's real, practical.
[Dan L] And this is in Stone Mountain in Atlanta.
Real train tracks. We didn't pay for those.
[Jen] No, we built those from scratch.
Well, we built the EDO from scratch.
[Dan L] And then we had a lot of conversations about,
"How do we make this EDO look...
recognizable, but not too obvious?"
And there was a conversation about how many rocks should go in the E.
[Jen] You came over to me looking really worried,
and I know that when you come over looking really worried you said,
"Jen, the E."
So, we were moving the rocks around on the E.
[Dan L] It was so perfect, that it made it seem like, "How could you miss
this clue to the secret camp? Everyone would be there."
[Jen] Oh, dear.
- Hey, we're not armed. - Save it, asshole.
Hold on.
[Jen] This scene actually was about 100 and something degrees.
- [Dan L] Yes. - [Dan C] A very, very hot day.
[Jen] It was crazy hot.
[Dan L] Feel bad from the soldiers in multiple layers.
[Jen] And out on that bleaching rock too.
- [Dan L] Yep. - [Dan C] Yep.
[Jen] But this is an old rock quarry,
and that was actually the way the rock looks.
- [Dan L] Mm-hmm. - [Jen] It had an interesting
sort of stark look to it
that was different from the actual main body of the kids' camp.
I told you, man, you...
[Jen] This was probably our biggest set, right?
[Dan L] Yes, the camp.
[Jen] Um... The most constructed, the most scale, the most extras.
Every day, we had 300 kids running around. Right? 300, I think.
[Dan L] Yeah, the kids were great. They were so enthusiastic,
were happy to do the same things over and over and over.
[Jen] And there are places in this camp...
Russell's funny, our production designer's funny.
He likes to get all outdoorsy and build stuff.
And a lot of the places in this camp are places you can actually hang out,
and in between, you'd find set members, cast members or crew members
hanging out in some of these places. They're actually comfortable.
[Dan L] Yeah, the treehouse. This is the great Paddy Gibson.
[Jen] First time we're seeing Paddy in person rather than a flashback.
[Dan L] Exactly.
- I knew you weren't reformed. - [laughs]
[Jen] And this office of his, on top of a water tower,
again, every single set in this place you could just hang out in.
- [Dan C] Yeah. - [Dan L] This was all... This was inside.
This was on a stage, just the interior of this... Of his little lair.
Everything you see outside is obviously out on a real location.
You're kinda legendary.
[Jen] Yeah, this one...
[Dan L] And he does a great American accent, I think...
[Dan C] Paddy really is an incredible actor.
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan L] Great in The OA.
[Dan C] Yeah, he was the best thing in The OA.
Just saw a new movie he was in called In a Relationship that he was...
He stole that movie. He's wonderful.
[Jen] He's also very interesting and subtle in what he does.
[Dan C] Yeah, agreed.
[Dan L] Yeah, he took a good approach to this character.
He played it real, as opposed to mustache-twirling.
[Dan C] In The OA, he plays a bully that you feel bad for, you know.
- [Dan L] Dan, want to talk about the song? - [Jen] How did we find this song, Dan?
[Dan L] Pilates Mix?
[Dan C laughs] Also on the Pilates mix.
Uh... I mean, obviously, this is... We are six years in the future,
so you want this to be a relatively recent song,
but you know, I was on the set with Jen, I think,
- days before this shot. - [Jen] Yeah.
[Dan C] And this was an ongoing conversation, and I was...
I've always just loved this album In Colour by Jamie xx
who's the DJ of The xx.
And this song in particular that I feel really speaks to the moment.
[Dan L] I remember you picked it. Every cue on this movie changed,
but this song we always fought to keep, because it just felt perfection,
and we didn't... We always told everyone, "No, this song stays."
[Jen] Yeah, you literally leaned over with your phone and you said,
"How's this?", and you played it.
And I said, "That's great! We're gonna use it!"
[Dan C] Here it is by the way. I mean, this is just magic.
I remember when we read it in the script for the first time, whenever that was,
being like, "Awesome." But then seeing it happen...
I mean, her look obviously sells it too,
but it's just that natural use of the powers where it's done out of love.
- It's a loving gesture. - [Jen] Right.
[Dan L] It's funny, when we shot that scene practically with a wire,
with him lassoing her out to the dance floor, I...
In the back of my head, I did not... I wasn't sure it was gonna work.
I thought, "Is this too silly?"
But it's actually really romantic and sweet.
And it works great. But at the time, I was a little nervous.
[Jen] Yeah, 'cause it's thrown away.
If it was a big thing, it would be silly, but it's the fact it's thrown away.
It's just a little practical gesture of, "Go on."
And people do all sorts of silly things on a dance floor in real life.
[Dan L] No, and also on this movie, I remember that when you're doing
these movies, you're working with a lot of extras,
and some of them are not as good dancers as you hoped,
and you have to sort of gently push them to the background
and pull up the people who can dance, and...
[Jen] I was actually really worried about the dance scene,
because I can't dance worth anything. I'm really bad.
I'm remedial.
And so, I was really worried about... And I don't go to dances.
- I think I stayed home for prom. - [Dan L] Have to get you out of the house.
[Dan C] I remember what happened was we got a bunch of professional dancers,
but also there were background actors that we were gonna use,
and it was almost like a very quick dance-off
where people just started dancing, and we slowly pulled...
It was like picking the baseball team in summer camp.
It was very funny.
- [Jen] Yeah. It ended up being... - [Dan C] They look great in that scene.
[Dan L] This is a scene where there was an iconic moment from the book
that we ended up cutting 'cause it didn't work.
Is this the... Did we initially have the rose here?
[Jen] We had the rose scene when they first arrived in the room.
- And we actually shot it. - [Dan L] Oh, then he puts it into her...
[Jen] We shot the whole rose giving scene.
[Dan L] We spent a lot of time on that shot.
[Jen] We did.
And getting the look of it right and getting the perfect rose for it.
And everything.
And it ended up being a major telegraph of, oh, he's a bad guy.
Because it's creepy.
- It is a creepy thing for him to do. - [Dan L] Yeah, it didn't occur to me
when we had it that that might be taken that way.
But we kept it in as long as we could 'cause I do remember our writer Chad
telling us how iconic that moment was. This was great too.
[Clancy] My father didn't care, he sanctioned it.
[Dan L] Uh, I remember, even though it's just
little quick cuts of it, that Paddy was so great.
His anguish and betrayal of his father and...
[Jen] Yeah, his last day on set.
And he got a bouquet of orange flowers...
[Dan L] I have a great a photo of him holding his bouquet.
I got to give it to him at some point.
[Dan C] What's great too is you see him briefly
in the opening in this same scene,
but now you're getting his version of it. You know?
If he knows we can't be fixed...
They'll never stop trying to fix us.
Why?
Because he's afraid of us.
[Jen] But he's so intense here which is really great.
[Dan L] But you feel the hurt in his voice.
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan C] Yup.
[Dan L] And so it makes him really likeable and relatable.
[Jen] 'Cause Paddy's such a great actor.
He can make someone that could have come off as being, sort of, straight evil.
[Dan L] No, it wasn't a ton to work with in the script.
And not the fault of the script just the role.
And he made the most of it.
And I won't hurt anyone?
[Dan L] Amandla's so great with what she could do with her eyes and...
Teach me.
[Jen] "Teach me." I love that.
[Clancy] Everyone has a place in the world.
A responsibility, a purpose.
[Jen] We really lucked out with rain too 'cause this whole set,
at one point it became a mud pit.
[Dan L] We were not there later, but we didn't luck out with rain
because we got rained out.
That thing turned into a swamp in later night scenes which we'll get to.
[Jen] I got to learn how to wear galoshes properly.
- They were mud. - [Dan L] We had some torrential downpours.
I'm amazed we actually finished.
[Clancy] Focus.
[Jen] This scene, the fact it's montaged is actually really helpful.
Originally, it wasn't. We shot it all as separate scenes.
And the hope was to eventually montage it,
but it never quite got there.
[Dan C] You and Dean did a lot of magic tricks in the movie,
but this might have been one of the more impressive ones. What you did here.
[Jen] This is basically post magic.
Because Dean came up with how to cut this in a way that really felt great.
[Dan C] Yeah.
[Jen] And it, we even used little outtakes and stuff.
Little things in there that made things a little bit happier,
brighter, seeing their relationship progress over the course of it.
But also kept the momentum going.
Because when we had it not a montage, it really drove down the energy.
[Dan L] No, this was a... I remember in the early days,
it was a real challenge this scene. It wasn't working.
[Dan C] And felt a lot of different things competing, a little clunky.
But this really pushed it all along nicely.
[Jen] Yeah.
[Clancy] You need to be stronger.
[Jen] And those bottles.
That sort of enclosure around the plants back there.
That's a Russell special.
[Jen laughs]
[Dan L] This is, I think, is gonna be the most informational
and educational moment in the film for everyone.
[Dan C] Anyone, anyone interested in peppers is gonna learn a lot right now.
[Jen laughs] I learned about peppers. I didn't know about that.
[Dan L] A lot of people didn't. I'm trying to remember when I knew that was the case.
Probably when I first read the script. I mean, the book or...
[boys arguing]
You're right.
[Dan I and Jen chuckle]
[Jen] I love the look on his face, that's great.
We need all the Vitamin C we can get.
[Jen] But this is towards the end of the shoot.
We had, um... This is probably the last couple of weeks of shoot.
It started getting really hot and humid out in Atlanta.
[Dan L] Oh, yeah.
- Atlanta in the summer is not easy. - [Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] Although we luckily wrapped in June before it got really intense.
But it was definitely... humid.
What happened?
I've never told anyone.
[Jen] I think there was a photograph of the two of them
sitting and figuring this thing out.
And I'm literally sitting between them on the sofa staring.
I felt like I was in some sort of therapy session.
[Dan L] Yeah.
[Jen] But Liam looking through the window and seeing the two of them together...
[Clancy] It's okay.
[Jen] ...that's really, it's so sad.
[Dan L] He's very sad in this scene.
[Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] They're connecting in a way he can't connect with her.
Yet.
[Jen] And there's nothing he can do about it.
There's no way he can share what these two can share.
And that's the way the villain can insinuate himself into Ruby's life
because he can offer something Liam can't.
[Dan L] Yeah, here's our sort of fading smoke effect which took a long time
to figure out how it should look, and we're thrilled with how it turned out.
[Jen] It was a long development process.
[Dan L] Remember it was like computerized, like Matrixy.
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan L] Early days.
It just didn't have the emotion to it.
[Jen] Björn was trying to find a look that was natural and emotional.
[Dan L] Right.
[Jen] And I think what he finally settled on was
the effect of ink in water dissipating.
[Ruby] Just a little kid. I had no clue what I was doing.
[Jen] I love effects like that.
The kind that you look at and go, I haven't seen that before done like that.
[Dan L] Mm-hmm.
I think early on we were also trying to do something so groundbreaking
and never seen before that it got too complicated and really we needed something
elegant and simple and sad.
[Jen] It's that stereotypical thing, you walk in and say,
"I want something that's never been seen before."
I want something completely new.
[Dan L] Then you look at 20 things and you're like I don't like any of this.
[Jen laughs]
[Dan L] Let's just go back to the first thing we had
that seems to work pretty well.
[Jen] Let's go back to the simple thing. Ink in water.
It's actually one of the things I'm obsessed with too. Because...
- [Dan L] Ink in water? - [Jen] Ink in water. [laughs]
But living water color paintings and stuff
is something that I was interested in doing before.
And to see it happen here visually on a live action shot is pretty amazing.
Intense.
[Jen] I love the fact there's details in here that really we didn't have to do.
But Russell put in there.
This tent was originally just a tent.
Like a military surplus tent in the script.
And the fact that it became this sort of bohemian place
you'd really want to hang out in.
[Dan L] Remember, we hired Russell off of, or Rusty as he prefers to be called,
- off of Captain Fantastic. - [Dan C] Captain Fantastic.
[Dan L] Which had that real lived in feel.
[Jen] Real lived in, yeah.
[Dan L] It was a perfect correlation to what we needed in our film.
[Dan C] I remember we said, Jen, go check out...
It wasn't even... I think it was just, you got to see Captain Fantastic.
It's a great movie. It has the feel of our movie.
You went and saw it right away and the hire that came out of it was,
Russell as the production designer. It's wonderful.
[Jen] Yeah, we're really lucky to get him.
It's a very unusual look.
It's sort of like happy decrepit. [laughs]
[Dan L] I do need to point out that's in a real lake.
[Jen] That's a real lake.
[Dan L] You can look at that and go that's a green screen,
but they we were literally at... Still at Stone Mountain.
[Jen] We did have to build the dock.
- [Dan L] But it was made out of real wood. - [Jen] It was made out of real wood.
I think this was the day where I really, you know...
This was the first time I've dealt with a live action shoot.
And occasionally moments of reality hit you and go,
wow, this is really happening.
We were here on this little island and it started pouring rain.
And we were huddled under this tent sort of waiting for the rain to go away.
And I was watching all the rain land around us,
looking at the dock, having people rush over trying to dry the dock
between rain showers so that we could have a consistent shot.
And those mundane things were so exciting because I hadn't dealt with that before.
[Dan L] Right.
My parents.
[Dan L] What is Clancy up to? This can't be good.
[Jen] This was an interesting little late addition
because we always knew he was
doing this, but to show what he was doing on the computer.
[Dan L] No, I remember I was worried it was telegraphing too much.
But I think Dean had some great instincts for it,
how to just up the tension and jeopardy and not be afraid of it.
- Embrace it. - [Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] Something bad is about to happen.
[Jen] Because when do you show that the villain is the villain?
When do you really, really give it away?
And if you didn't know it before this next section,
this next section doesn't have any tension.
'Cause you just have him going to her mind and you don't really know whether
it means anything or not.
He's not stupid. He's, like, the smartest person...
[Dan L] I mean, he is a green.
[Jen] Huh?
All right.
- [Dan L] Just talking at the screen. - [Jen laughs]
But first... you teach me.
What do you want me to teach you?
I wanna know how...
[Dan L] Remember? A lot of conversation about collar up, collar down for Clancy.
[Jen] Collar up, evil.
- Collar down, good. - [Dan L] Good.
[Jen laughs]
What mood is he in? What's his collar doing? [laughs]
If we can figure out how you did it...
[Dan L] I wonder if this movie will bring back the up collar.
[Jen] I don't know.
One thing that's really neat about seeing some of the descent into showing
- what the villain is. - [Dan L] Mm-hmm.
[Jen] 'Cause that descent had to be believable
and we kept figuring where we'd start that descent
to make that slide seem believable.
And before when we didn't have the reveal that he was the bad guy here,
this area right here was just this gentle,
soft walk down memory lane that seemed exactly like the other scenes.
This was like a sweet little moment. Instead...
[Dan L] But now it's got a little bit of tension.
...it's a little sinister.
And I remember on the very first day of shoot we shot Clancy,
Paddy in this room with Lidya on the very first day.
And everybody was saying this looks really creepy.
- And I'm like, yes, it does. - [Dan L] It was creepy.
Yeah... Watching a little girl.
[Ruby] Don't worry anymore, mommy and daddy.
Nothing can take me away from you.
[Jen] 'Cause he is invading her space.
[Dan L] Yeah, and I love what Kramer did here with distortion and...
- [Jen] He found this crazy Petzval lens. - [Dan L] Oh, right.
[Jen] And, uh, it was all practical visual effect, in-camera effect.
And what we ended up doing was we'd have to swap out lenses
like 8,000 times
in order to get a regular shot and Petzval shot.
And Björn had this, he basically mapped it and said we'll replicate
the same effect in visual effects.
So some of the shots are Petzval and some of them are practical.
Or VFX.
And you wouldn't really know which ones they are 'cause they look identical.
I'll just erase this part and we can start over.
[Dan L] Now this was a tough scene to do.
Trying to get the balance right.
[Jen] Yeah, and I wanted to make sure that we treated it tastefully and that
Amandla was never uncomfortable during this scene.
[Dan L] 'Cause there was a lot of conversation
throughout the script phase and up to shooting about this scene.
'Cause it's a rape scene. Or near rape scene.
[Jen] It... It was pretty graphic.
[Dan L] But it was such a critical part of the book that there was no way there.
I know there was some conversation, can you get rid of it?
And I think we tried to figure out how to get rid of it.
[Jen] But you can't get rid of it because it's integral to the book.
[Dan L] Of course. Which is why we kept it.
[Jen] I think the big note that I had when we first talked about the movie
was how do we deal with it.
- And the two things, if we..., - [Dan L] It's pretty intense
in the book too. And in the original script.
Much more intense than what we shot I think.
But I think you found the perfect balance cause it's...
[Jen] It's a balance of showing what happens
and having her actually confront it
and make the guy pay.
[Liam] Through here.
Come on. This way is not guarded.
[Jen] This scene was actually one in the very original draft,
did not have Clancy showing up here.
It was more of a scene between him and Captain.
- And, uh... - [Dan L] Right. I remember.
And this was a tough scene to get this together in terms of production design.
[Jen] Yeah, this one I boarded myself.
Remember? Because it was so important to me to get right.
[Dan L] Do you remember Wade was banging his head against the wall to get the feel
of what it would be like to be thrown against the wall.
He was a real method actor.
[Jen] He was very method about it.
And I said, "You don't have to do that, Wade."
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan L] Yeah. [laughs]
It's not our idea.
[Jen] But he was really throwing himself into it.
But I love the sort of simplicity
of the light bar here and then being confronted
by all these soldiers.
[Dan L] Remember, we had to figure out why are they going inside to get away?
And we... I think we pulled it off, but I remember it was a little tricky
to establish this set.
[Jen] This is also not what it was like in the book.
This is very different
from the original draft of the script and the book.
Because in the book, you didn't have this confrontation here.
- You had it in the middle of the battle. - [Dan L] No.
- [Jen] And he never... - [Dan L] Oh, right.
- ...punched Liam repeatedly. - [Dan L] Yeah, I remember that.
[Jen] This was all an addition, and the reason why I boarded it
was because... Not for the setup of the compositions,
but I wanted to get this moment where he is confronting the other suitor.
So that literally he's punching Liam because he has so much more power.
- Like, look how much power I have. - [Dan L] Right.
[Jen] And it's a way to build Ruby
to the place where she's gonna be strong enough
to change into this other person.
This powerful person that's gonna sort of become the protector of the group.
It sucks, Ruby.
We could have been leading an army together.
[Jen] And it's so creepy the fact that he's punching him.
He can't fight back. It's so underhanded.
[Dan C] And again, I somehow,
'cause of Paddy's acting, I feel bad for him.
He's got such pain in his delivery.
[Dan L] I remember on set thinking he's playing it with such hurt.
- [Dan C] Yeah. - [Dan L] That you feel for him.
In his very screwed up way.
And obviously, it's impossible to root for him
after an attempted assault on Ruby.
- But, uh... - [Dan C] If you can empathize
with a villain and you feel bad for him whatever
it is that's tortured him in this place. Then that's a good performance.
[Jen] I also didn't want to have cartoon violence.
I mean, a guy's getting kicked and I wanted to make sure it looked real.
And that he's gonna be dealing with it for the rest of the movie.
[electricity popping]
I love that little Zu is so dangerous.
[Dan L] Yeah, it was a constant refrain of mine
which I'm sure you were tired of hearing
was more light, more lighting, more danger.
- [Jen] More lightening. - [Dan L] More power.
And our Ospreys.
[Jen] This was about two weeks of night shoots.
[Dan L] In the rain.
In a muddy bog of a rain which you hopefully can't tell some days.
[Jen] Right next to a bog.
So it literally was a bog and had mosquitos all over the place.
Um, and I think...
[Dan L] And if we haven't mentioned before, Jen does not like bugs.
[Jen] I don't like bugs. [laughs]
But this was all night time so we went to straight night shoots for two weeks.
- It was brutal. - [Dan C] It was brutal.
[Dan L] I think we lost a couple days
because of the rain or we had to wrap early.
And this was great. I remember watching the rehearsal on this
with the revealing of the reds and...
[Jen] I love that the red is the sweetest, most beautiful little girl.
[Dan L] And it's worth noting that all the reds with the hoods off
are the kids of stunt men.
- And they're stunt kids. - [Jen] Yeah.
We had to make sure that everybody was safe.
[Dan L] They can actually do... Uh, there goes Mike.
[Jen] There was practical flames in addition to non-practical flames.
And we wanted to make sure everybody was very safe through all this.
[Dan L] Yeah, we definitely were...
I think the idea was to go with practical flames,
um, but when we saw a cut of the film, we needed to enhance some
because it just didn't have that otherworldly supernatural power to it.
[Dan C] Yeah.
- Extra terrifying there. - [Dan L] But, yeah, safety first.
[Jen] Safety first.
Kramer was, uh, trying to get a lot of the visual effects,
the practical effects of the flames.
[Dan L] Any DP is gonna want that.
[Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] I re... And you, Jen, I remember the idea that it had that little bit of
a concussive air ripple with the heat blast was
a real, smart little tweak.
I don't know if people will notice it but...
[Jen] 'Cause it's not... It's not unrealistic. It's real flames.
But with a tweak which is kind of the tone of the whole movie.
Remember way back when,
way, way in the very beginning when basically there's me
and my husband and Molly sitting,
trying to figure out what to do with the movie
- in a little tiny office. - [Dan L] In Hollywood, right?
[Jen] Yeah. This scene, we were boarding on the wall.
And I showed you the scene where everybody's kneeling in front of Clancy.
[laughs] That was a very early little visual play.
[Dan L] Yeah, I remember on set that day, it was a conversation.
How many kids or do we have too many kids doing it?
Or not enough kids? But I think you got it just right.
[Jen] I just love the fact he has that much power over these kids.
It's a quick visual read of they're in trouble.
[Dan L] This is a great beat.
[Jen] It shows her powerful.
Shows her facing this guy, which I love.
And glowing eyes!
This was in the original pitch
- to marketing. - [Dan C] Right.
I remember the look between them.
Even in your storyboards, Jen.
Just the back and forth, this was great.
[Jen] Because again, it shows strength.
It shows power to have these big burly guys just taken over.
[Dan C] They're almost the chess pieces in this game between them.
[Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] One thing I'm happy about 'cause in other films is sometimes you
cast the extras for soldiers
and they come to set and they're very small,
thin, and don't have that physical presence.
And I remember us saying to the extras casting,
get us football players.
Former military people who look intimidating.
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan C] Yeah.
[Jen] I just wanted to make sure they knew how to handle themselves.
[Dan L] Right and that's another thing you sometimes find.
Is that they actually don't know how to handle a gun.
And so it doesn't look real.
And I always catch that in movies or TV shows.
In the background.
But we had them perfectly trained.
[Jen] I love this beat because it just shows what she's capable of doing.
The moment where she finally grows into herself completely.
[Dan L] And realizes she's powerful and she can fight back.
[Jen] I love that shot of her with her eyes looking up at the Osprey.
I kinda like how I am.
[Dan L] That's a great line.
And I think it's empowering for women to hear that,
to have a character say, I'm not gonna... You can't change me.
[Jen] I think everybody goes through relationships like that.
[Dan L] And I think we should point out that's a real Osprey
we crashed multiple times.
[Jen] Multiple times. We had to have five spares.
[Dan C] The Osprey budget of this movie was just incredible.
[Dan L] It was amazing. It just missed her head.
- We totally lucked out on that one. - [Jen laughs]
[Dan L] Um. No, that was pretty brilliant CG work on the Ospreys.
And it's tough when you're watching cuts in the early days.
- It's so skeletal and not done... - [Dan C] You have no idea
- what you're getting. - ...and you just hope that one day
uh, it'll look great. And Björn did an amazing job.
[Dan C] This beat right here really came out nicely too of Clancy.
Clancy, I mean of Chubs saving her and getting burnt in the process.
[Jen] Chubs is the hero.
The understated hero of them all.
You know, this shows how committed the actors were.
On the day they showed up and their clothes weren't quite dirty enough.
And both of them just jumped down, rolled around in the dirt for a while
to get themselves properly messed up for this shot.
[Dan L] There's your smiley face again.
[Jen] Yeah,
subliminal little smiley faces everywhere.
[Chubs and Ruby breathing heavily]
[Jen] This is, um... This is a nice moment for Chubs.
We're really debating just how damaged his face was.
[Dan L] Yes, we had to worry about... Obviously, he had to look gravely injured,
but we also had to worry about rating and um, gross out factor.
[Jen] The great thing about the make up in this movie and Donald...
[Dan L] Donald's amazing. I have not mentioned that yet.
Donald Mowat is the best.
[Jen] One of the best, most legendary make-up guys in the business
and the reason why he's so great is you don't notice what he does.
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan L] He's such a pro. He's one of...
[Jen] He's so naturalistic in how he makes people look without making them look like
they're wearing anything.
And he did all of this work on the burns and everything,
it looks very subtle. Tasteful.
[Dan L] Remember there were a lot
of last minute conversations about that button.
I remember the early version was not ideal.
- [Jen] We had to... - [Dan L] But we got it right.
[Jen] We had to shimmy around that button quite a bit.
[Ruby] Chubs?
[Jen] Even in the daytime you see the burns and they still look natural.
- [Dan L] Mm-hmm. - [Jen] Not horror movie.
I knew you were okay.
[Jen] I think this was the day where just watching this performance,
it was a very simple scene, the two of them.
In fact, the ending of the movie was the first thing that we knew that we had
in that, unless you have a good ending you don't have a movie
and I hate the idea of people barreling into production
when they don't have the ending.
I mean, how do you know what anything's going to?
And this is sort of the flight into the big emotional...
sort of finale of the relationship.
And this day, I remember we were watching the two of them.
Such a simple scene.
But there's so much going on between them just emotionally, facially.
[Dan L] I remember I missed it because when we were doing the crew call,
it's when I found out my daughter was going to be born.
[Jen] That's right, you had to rush off set that day.
[Dan L] I did and so I missed the actual shooting of this moment.
But, yeah, I remember it was a splits that day.
And I got to set and I was like, oh, I gotta leave.
- [Jen] I think you had a good excuse. - [Dan L] Yeah.
- It was a pretty good excuse. - [Jen] Yeah.
You can't pull that one too often, though. [laughs]
I'm not leaving you.
[Jen] But again, the performances of these guys are just so amazing.
These actors are so good.
[Dan L] Yeah, we really...
Sometimes you don't always get it right, but I feel like the cast we got
for this movie we got it really right,
and they're really the next generation of great actors.
[Jen] There was a lot of effort put into finding the right group.
- [Dan C] Oh, yeah. - [Dan L] Oh, yeah.
[Jen] The chemistry of this group was a big thing for us in the beginning.
- [Dan L] And they're really good kids too. - [Jen] Yeah.
If you're going to be spending this much time with people in the woods,
you better like them.
- [Dan L] You don't always get that luxury. - [Dan C] That's rule one in filmmaking.
[Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] I was always curious, Jen, why'd you go with the one-armed aiming?
[Jen] Because it's awesome. [laughs]
[Dan C] I like this shot a lot of just the feet and the foreground.
- It was a beautiful action. - [Jen] It's actually because
it's a trunk shot.
[Dan L] Those are actually my feet, Dan. I don't know if you know that.
I was back from the hospital.
[Dan C] Dan's a multi-hyphenate producer and leg model.
[Jen laughs]
So, the safe house.
Yeah, we could have gone with a full-on crazy,
you know, James Bond lair kind of thing.
[Dan C] No, I think the grounded approach is...
- [Jen] Full grounded. - ...so much better.
Chubs, he's in the hospital.
He's in pretty bad shape. So if he has any chance...
[Jen] Someone's real house with cute dogs that they had to put away for the day.
[Dan L] It was a very nice house.
[Jen] A very nice house.
And it was air conditioned which was helpful.
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan L] That's a plus in Atlanta.
[Jen] Again, this was a scene that was a bit different.
And it sort of leads to one of my favorite movies...
moments of this movie is how she gets rid of Rob. [laughs]
[Dan L] Oh, yeah. That always got a good laugh which was nice.
I love a movie when you...
that's as intense as this one when you can earn those laughs
and that was a nice beat that's about to come up.
[Jen] And that wasn't in the original draft and uh...
[Dan L] No.
It just seemed like, especially with so much intensity happening,
you need that moment of lightness before we go into this next big emotional beat.
[Dan L] Yeah.
[Jen] And again, it gives you satisfaction to see her do this.
- It's so good. - [Dan L] Well, yeah, it turned into a...
fantasy for a teen to be able to make an adult shut up.
[all laugh]
[Jen] Everybody wants to have the power to do that, right?
You're an asshole.
I'm an asshole.
[Jen] I love that. [laughs]
[Dan C] I love the look that Mandy gives her here.
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan L] Don't do that to me, please.
[Jen] And Rob committed to it, you know?
Mark was just in it for that moment.
- [Dan L] He's a trooper. - [Jen] Yeah.
[Dan L] Please don't call me an asshole.
[all laugh]
[Jen] At this point, she's so powerful, she's able to do so much,
but she's still dealing with,
she's living in a system that's still bigger than her,
which is difficult.
I love the fact she gets smarter,
I love the fact that she actually starts taking control of the situation...
[Dan L] That's a big theme, control.
[Jen] Yeah, control and being comfortable with what she's capable of
for the right reasons.
[Dan C] I remember this moment here where he steps back...
[Dan L] Yeah, it got a big laugh
- in the previews... - [Dan C] It got a big laugh on set.
[Jen] Yeah.
It's subtle. It's the little things, it's the little things.
[Dan L] And, Jen, this was always a scene, really this movie got greenlit
because you did an animatic of this moment and it moved people so much
and it's one of the moments in the movie that didn't change much. That it...
We always had an ending, it's where usually you have to figure out
your ending, we shoot your ending, this always works.
Want to talk about that a bit?
[Jen] Yeah, it was the thing that really made me sign onto the movie was this beat,
because if you don't have an emotional core to the movie,
you don't have a movie and this always was in the book.
This moment where she erases him was so heart wrenching
and, uh, I actually went back
to the book to try and get the story to be closer to what the book was.
[Dan L] Mm-hmm.
[Jen] The words that he says, the story that he gives is just so...
it's heartbreaking what he's talking about,
their future lives together.
[Dan L] You wrote this.
[Jen] Well, I went back to the book and sort of basically found...
- [Dan L] Help piece it together. - [Jen] Help piece it together.
But I did craft it very carefully.
Because this had to be the moment where you cry.
This is the grown, hairy man crying, bawling into his popcorn kind of thing...
[Dan L] I would hear Dan through our office wall, sobbing.
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan L] Multiple times, but each time.
[Jen] But getting this moment
and people felt it on that day when we were shooting it,
the camera people watching them film it...
[Dan L] I think it was your simple animatic to shooting it,
to watching it in previews, it always worked.
[Jen] And even a simple animatic, I set it to music,
and I showed it, that this is what the movie could be like,
- and you could feel that even then. - [Dan L] Mm-hmm.
[Jen] And what was really amazing
was watching our actors performing this beat
in real life, it was a chilly moment. Chillies.
Running off to some fancy university.
My mom can't bear to see her baby leave. So...
[Jen] And those are real tears.
[Dan L] Oh, yes, they are.
[Jen] We actually had to clean up a few.
[Dan L] Yeah, Amandla had an amazing ability to tear on command...
when she needed to.
[Jen] One of them is not real,
but I dare anyone to try and figure out which one.
- [Dan L] The blue one. - [Jen laughs]
Again, so much of the work in this movie was done for stuff
that you don't notice.
A sort of enhanced reality rather than anything too overt.
Earbuds in, music blaring.
- [Jen] It's such an emotional beat. - [Dan L] It's great.
The reason Dan's not talking right now is he's actually crying.
[Jen laughs] Pass the tissues. There, there.
[Dan C] Just plug in me. I'm back on after an emotional couple of moments.
[Jen laughs]
[Dan L] This score is beautiful.
[Jen] Yeah.
What happens next?
[Jen] Again, the performances are so good.
[Dan L] This line.
I tell you that I love you.
- [Dan L] That's a pretty good one. - [Jen] That right there.
Close your eyes.
[Jen] So beautiful.
I'm gonna finish the story.
[Jen] We had a lot of debate on whether her eyes should go on or off.
[Dan L] Yeah, we did.
I wasn't so sure we should, but I think in the end it works.
[Jen] I really liked having it on, because it's a subtle little thing
and we played with the sound to make sure that it's not too much.
[Dan L] And this, again,
back to our smoke erasing effect which is so eloquent.
[Jen] And, again, this was all from the beginning,
what we were planning the whole movie around.
So whenever we shot all these locations, we would have the erasure shot
that we would pick up on the day knowing that we were going to be using it
- for this section. - [Dan L] I love that image.
In fact, they're using it internationally a lot.
[Dan C] As a poster, yeah.
- [Jen] Yeah. - [Dan C] It's heart breaking.
[Jen] In fact, it's one of the reasons why we wanted to make the movie
as pretty as it is, because if the movie had ugly images you were erasing,
you would go, oh, that's fine.
- [Dan C] He doesn't want to remember. - [Dan L] You got a situation there.
It had to be the most beautiful images that you can't imagine losing.
[Dan L] That's the great...
The most moving thing is that she has to erase herself
and his love of her from him.
She's sacrificing that to save him.
[Jen] Yeah.
Who are you?
[Jen] I really love the fact that we don't linger
and don't have a whole bunch of, wait, what just happened?
[Dan L] No. I remember in an earlier cut there was a little more space in there.
[Jen] We actually filmed all of that.
- [Dan L] Yeah, smartly tightened it up. - [Jen] I love that it's gone.
I don't want anything from you.
[Jen] And this is another reason why when we were first formulating the movie,
why that Gudetama was so important.
Without it, it's very hard to know whether she's leaving hope.
- [Dan C] Mm-hmm. - [Jen] This just becomes a sad ending.
Whereas if you have a visual cue, like she's leaving him a bread crumb,
just a little something to give you hope like maybe he'll remember...
[Dan C] They're not totally disconnected.
[Jen] Right. She's getting him to safety but she's giving a little bit of hope,
someday maybe this will work out.
[Dan L] Again, do you want to talk about the song?
'Cause this was also, we knew from minute one,
the perfect song.
[Jen] It was one of those...
We actually filmed it with this song in mind.
And it was one of the first round of, hey, wouldn't these wish-list songs be good.
And Anton actually, he sent this list and I listened to it and instantly
I saw the end of the movie, I saw every shot at the end of this movie.
Exactly what it needed to be.
And so I edited the song down to exactly what I needed and made an animatic,
that was not like a drawing animatic but a word animatic,
with shots of Ruby walking, Gudetama shot,
Liam turns, starts to walk down that...
[Dan L] I remember you showing that and I was amazed how just a simple text...
[Jen] Each one of these shots is exactly what was set to music
and we filmed it on the day with the music in mind for this.
Her turning, the way her feet are walking,
how that goes into her going into the stadium,
all the shots with the kids with their hands raised.
All of that was set to the music and we filmed every single shot
to the timing that we needed.
[Dan L] Smart.
[Jen] But the weird thing is, even an animatic with words,
just words on a screen and this song made people stop and go,
that feels like something.
[Dan L] By the way, we have a cameo of our author, right there.
- Alexandra Bracken, nurse. - [Dan C] Nurse.
- [Jen] Alexandra! - [Dan L] Made the movie.
[Jen] She was very worried.
- [Dan L] She did very well, she... - [Jen] She did amazing.
[Dan L] Yeah, I remember she was worried about tripping.
[Jen] There were a lot of cables on the ground.
[Dan C] I love this shot.
[Dan L] Yeah, remember we had to make him a little bit more damaged,
early versions he didn't look like a plane landed on him.
[Dan C] Right.
[Jen] This is an actual abandoned stadium, which is kind of crazy.
[Dan L] It is amazing how many abandoned structures we found
that worked for the movie in Atlanta.
[Jen] Yeah. It's an actual abandoned stadium.
We didn't have to do much except for making sure the graffiti was cleared
and make our own to cover some of it. But, it was real.
[Dan L] And then remember spending time trying to figure out what color orange,
- what shade of orange paint? - [Dan C] We really worked hard on that.
- [Jen laughs] - [Dan L] And I think we nailed it.
Dan, why didn't you and I get a cameo in the stands?
- I'm just realizing, - [Jen] Yeah, why didn't you?
[Dan L] what happened there?
They'd be like, what are those two old guys doing in there?
[all laugh]
[Dan C] That doesn't seem appropriate.
- [Dan L] And that is The Darkest Minds. - [Jen] That is The Darkest Minds.
[Dan C] Here's our awesome credit sequence.
[Dan L] Which also took probably very few people think about,
the amount of effort that goes into getting this right...
But, yeah, we put a lot of thought into trying to find a simple
but elegant font and effect.
[Dan C] With cool, you know, back shots, moments from the movie,
like the train tracks there.
[Jen] I always liked the idea of having something beautiful to look at
so that people sit through and watch the hardworking people.
[Dan L] The only thing we're missing is a post-credit.
- Uh... Sto... - [Jen laughs]
[Jen] Yeah, what happened to the post-credit scene?
[Dan C] Post credit scene following a Twinkie.
[Jen laughs]
[Jen] That's right. What was in the Twinkie?
[Dan L] Is it too late to do this? It would have been awesome if we...
[Jen] You're the producer, get the money for it, let's do it now. [laughs]
[Dan L] Little Easter egg.
We should introduce the character from the second book.
[Jen] Oh, my gosh.
I just like the idea of ending the movie with an uplift
and it's sort of empowering.
[Dan C] I remember when we first heard Ben, our composer,
who's amazing, his approach to this end score
and it sounded amazing.
[Dan L] Right. Because we could have gone with a song,
but we never really could top the emotion of this.
[Dan C] Yeah, no, this felt very sweeping.
[Jen] Powerful.
And also the imagery is classy. It's really... pretty.
[Dan L] It really... Yeah, we saw a lot of prototypes that weren't quite right
and I think we ended with the best version.
[Jen] And the Ospreys.
[Dan C] Ospreys get their moment.
[Jen] Very cool. Well, this was fun.
[Dan L] Yeah. Thanks for hearing us out.
[Jen] Yeah, I hope if you're watching this,
I hope you enjoyed the movie and, uh...
thanks for letting us blab over it for a while.
[Jen laughs]
- [Dan L] All right. - [Jen] All right.