MTV: Nikki Reed Who Direct Breaking Dawn
March 21, 2010 By 5 Comments
MTV: Nikki Reed And Chris Weitz the Surreal Walmart DVD Appearance
March 21, 2010 By 3 Comments
MTV: Chris Wietz, Better Than a Chimpanzee
March 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
CNN: Chris Weitz Interview
March 18, 2010 By 3 Comments
CNN talked to Chris Weitz about the upcoming New Moon DVD.
“Chris Weitz was determined to get the moon right. And when you have a movie about vampires and werewolves whose fans pay attention to every detail, it’s important to get the moon right.
For the director of “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” though, the impetus for showing the moon phase properly in the shot that opens the film was an astrophysicist, not a Twihard.
“I went to a lecture by Neil deGrasse Tyson where he’s complaining that they’d gotten the stars in ‘Titanic’ wrong,” Weitz said. “So his voice was in the back of my head, that we had to get the phase of the moon properly.”
“New Moon,” which comes out on DVD Saturday, did a lot of things properly, indicated by the fans’ support. Though “Twilight,” the first film in the series, received respectful reviews and good box office, “New Moon” — which continues the story of lovestruck human Bella and vampire Edward — was the bigger blockbuster, outgrossing the first film by more than $100 million domestically and earning more than $700 million worldwide.”
Fearnet Interviews Chris Weitz
March 12, 2010 By 2 Comments
Fearnet has a great interview with New Moon director Chris Weitz where he talks about the commentary for the DVD and some of the choices that were made in the process of film making. Â Chris had this to say about adapting a book to a movie in relation to the “months” passage of the book:
I think that the passage of time was an open opportunity for us to take something that was a literary device that works rather nicely in the book and turn it into a kind of elegant visual effects shot that doesn’t necessarily seem like a very CGI-intensive shot, but it in fact was very labor-intensive and was done over the course of half of a year. The elements that go into it, it has to be shot in numerous passes in order to get the various seasons outside the window and all of that kind of thing, and I always knew this would be a really interesting way to use a motion-control camera to show the passage of time. So that I saw as an opportunity to expand upon what was in the book.
Read the whole interview over at Fearnet.
Robert Pattinson Defends Chris Weitz
March 9, 2010 By 12 Comments
The video clip above gives a little teaser of teh interview found here. Our favorite part is quoted below:
“A lesson in anger control.
“While we were filming, one of the security guys saw me getting more and more upset with the paparazzi guys. He just sort of came up and was like, ‘Imagine going out there and trying to hit one of them while, let’s say, 40 cameras are clicking away.’ That was enough to kind of calm my frustration. But, at the end of the day, you can’t say, ‘I’m not doing it until these people go away.’ You have to keep acting. So it was definitely way more intense than any of the Twilight films.”
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Maybe he skips the reviews.
“I didn’t like the way New Moon was treated by the critics. I think it was reviewed in the context of just being a big franchise movie. When something is so hyped, inevitably, there is a backlash against it. I think Chris Weitz is an amazing director. I really enjoyed the film. So the naysayers kind of annoyed me.”
Via Twilighters Anonymous
Collider: Chris Weitz New Moon DVD Interview
March 6, 2010 By 7 Comments
Frosty from Collider interviewed Chris Weitz on the making of the New Moon DVD. Now Frosty had a different perspective from most in that he was able to get some early info from Chris back at Comic Con. Check out the interview, it shows how things evolve over time.
“With The Twilight Saga: New Moon hitting DVD and Blu-ray on March 20, I was able to talk with director Chris Weitz about the upcoming release. When the film was getting ready to hit theaters, I asked Chris Weitz about the eventual DVD release and he told me to expect a commentary from Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner and about ten minutes of deleted scenes. So when I got the specs of the DVD/Blu-ray and saw there was no commentary and no deleted scenes, I knew this would be the main topic of conversation. Also, I asked everyone on Twitter to send me questions and a ton of you asked me about the deleted scenes and commentary.
The way Weitz described it to me, the reason you’re not going to be able to hear Kristen, Rob and Taylor is due to time. When they were recording the commentary, for whatever reason, they couldn’t fit it into the schedule. I know it sucks for fans that were looking forward to it…but the DVD is due around the time the movie is getting released and that last month is very rough on everyone.”
Check out Chris’ answers to what happened to the actor commentary and where missing scenes may be on Collider.
MTV: 5 Secrets of New Moon
March 6, 2010 By 10 Comments
MTV interviewed Chris Weitz by phone for the New Moon DVD release. You can see part of the interview below. Please be advised that the video on the same page was shot several months prior to the DVD commentary track being recorded and the the information in there is not current!
“Our Lord?: In its Italian-set portions, “New Moon” features a significant amount of religious iconography, and Edward certainly suffers a great deal. Is he supposed to be a Christ figure?
“I think that he is in a sense he’s doomed to suffer eternally,” Weitz said. “He actually thinks of himself as a damned figure, but he’s wrong about that. So in some senses, yeah, he is a martyr figure.”
Black Eyes: In Stephenie Meyer’s book, Edward’s eyes go black in Italy. Why don’t his eyes turn in the film?
“It’s because I screwed up!” Weitz admitted.
Really? He just forgot?
“Well, yeah, I kinda did,” he said. “Well, there are two reasons. One is that I messed up. The other reason is that I actually thought that onscreen it would be quite bizarre to see his eyes go completely black, and that it would be more satisfying and less jarring to have that moment of reunion be a reunion with revivified Edward. But probably, the long and the short of it, there are many details that I did not drop the ball on, and there are some that I did.”
IESB: Chris Weitz New Moon DVD Interview
March 4, 2010 By 17 Comments
Once again Christina Radish proves why she is one of the best interviewers out their: insightful questions that demonstrate her knowledge of the product!
“IESB: Were there any specific parts of the film that you were most looking forward to talking about for the commentary?
Chris: I was very happy to talk about some of the more complicated shots that we did, like the roundy-round shot. That was a bit in which we took what was a series of chapter headings in the book and turned it into a motion-control shot in which the seasons passed as Kristen Stewart’s character, Bella, remained in the same place. What I like to do with CG is to use it as expressively as possible, and not to make things blow up good, but to sometimes render something ineffable that would be very difficult to do in camera. That involved a lot of work, in which a motion-control camera captured the movement of our steady-cam operator. So, it was a pleasure to talk about that, and about what goes into something like that.
IESB: Having had to deal with stunts, green screen, CGI, weather, bugs and everything you had going on, what was the biggest challenge in bringing this film to the screen, so as to please as many of the fans as possible?
Chris: I think the greatest challenge was the logistical load of it. When you’re talking about taking a film from beginning to end in one year, it’s difficult to do that with a normal film where people are just sitting on their butts, talking to one another. But, when you add in underwater work, heavy CGI work and wire work, it becomes extraordinarily complicated. And then, you add in getting the London Symphony Orchestra to record a soundtrack, and getting 10 or so indie bands to compose songs especially for the film, there are a lot of timelines that are ticking along, at the same time, and you hope that you are able to combine it all at the right point. And, you always end up, just at the last minute, on the last day, your final CGI shot comes in. There are about 400 and something CGI shots, which actually isn’t that many compared to what I’ve done before, but it’s quite a lot. It can complicate things when you’re in the editing room.”
