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SHOOT STORY DOWNSIZING
it ’ s ten centimetres tall, maybe. So the flames [were changed]. But those are all kind of subtle things. We ’ re not shooting Night at the Museum ... we ’ re not shooting small people with a big camera, we ’ re not in a macro photography or close focus situation. Conceptually we shrink our camera with them, once we ’ re small and amongst the small or downsized people we ’ re shooting them with a small camera.” Executing Payne ’ s vision required, Papamichael says, “a lot more shooting days than we usually have, a lot more preparation, working with the VFX supervisor, James Price. With the VFX, you don ’ t really know what it ’ s going to look like until ILM starts handing things over. Alexander
ABOVE Matt Damon with Udo Kier as Konrad and Christoph Waltz as Dusan.
WE HAD NORTH AMERICA’S BIGGEST STAGE, WE HAD TO SCALE EVERYTHING UP AND IT BECOMES COMPLICATED
had all the green screen work. We had north America ’ s biggest stage, we had to scale everything up and it becomes more complicated than what Alexander ’ s used to. We tried to shield him from the technicalities of it, but still it breaks the normal flow of how he develops a scene, it ’ s very much an organic process of how we see the actors move and we come up with a few shots.” Keeping Payne comfortable while executing the film ’ s visual effects required a cautious approach. “I kept telling him, ‘we ’ ll shoot it like we usually shoot your movies. We ’ ll block with the actors, we don ’ t need to storyboard, I ’ ll operate the camera.’ He stands by the camera, it ’ s that little magical triangle of director, camera, actors... it doesn ’ t matter how many trucks are parked somewhere and how many people are standing somewhere. It happens in a more controlled, intimate set.”
is very much rooted in reality, to the degree that when we scout a restaurant and bar he wants to leave everything intact, doesn ’ t want to move even a painting, wants to cast the real bar person... it was a stretch for him to conceive all these things.” Given the effects workload, some scenes required multiple elements which would be photographed perhaps weeks apart, and required great precision in terms of scaling both the scene and the lighting. The filmmakers used 3D prints of miniature people as a lighting and framing aid. “We had green screen elements which were often shot weeks later,” says Papamichael. “We would shoot the plates when the guy sits on the table on his little cracker box. We shot Matt ’ s side and we ’ d make 3D printed figures and light with them and have the actors talk to them and we ’ d shoot the clean plates. Weeks later in Toronto on stage we
BELOW Neil Patrick Harris as Jeff Lonowski.
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