Chris Weitz: Fansite Friday Interview Part II

This is our final Fansite Friday. we’re sure that you won’t be disappointed in the rest of what Chris Wietz had to say. All totaled it was an unheard of 25 minutes of interview on set that was filming. We’d again like to thank our set visit buddies. In many fandoms, site don’t get along. This isn’t the case here. Shout out to Twilighters Anonymous, His Golden Eyes, Twilight Moms, Twilight Series Theories, Twilight Source/ Imprint!

Q: I’m wondering since you’re so good with CGI, and it’s your forte, how’s the design for the werewolves coming?

Chris: I think it’s going to be good. We’re taking Stephenie’s lead really they’re supposed to be wolves the size of horses. The temptation…we’ve avoided any temptation to kind of go Lon Chaney with it, or to make it kind of humanoid. The werewolves are very much creatures of nature.

Phil Tippet is doing the …it’s not me, I’m not the one who’s good at doing CGI I just happened to have lucked into working with people who are very good at it. So, I just know a good thing when I see it, and Phil Tippet who is a multi-Oscared guy (ILM) worked on Stars Wars and all that stuff is doing the wolves, and they’re going to be great. They’re going to be fantastic.

So and at the same time they are going to fit that world that’s already there. You can’t suddenly hop out of reality. Somehow what Stephenie manages to do is to mix the emotions that everybody feels at some point in their lives with these kinds of supernatural things: vampires and werewolves and stuff. It would be wrong if you suddenly saw a werewolf in a different kind of movie. They have to be carefully integrated. If there’s one thing I’m good at with CG is that I don’t like it to jump to the foreground too much. I like it to settle in like any other aspect.

Q: So it looks natural?

Chris: Yeah, Yeah.

Q: How is this compared to The Golden Compass just as a development process?

Chris: It’s been an easier process. Let me see how am I going to put this? I found a lot less interference from Summit in terms of…and a lot more understanding the books than A-Line had of Golden Compass. So I think there’s a studio that understands the importance of the books…the studio…the members of which who have read the books and appreciate them and do not just see them as engines of possible profit. So that makes a tremendous difference. It really does.

There were a lot of parts in Twilight that were a homage to the cover and Stephenie had a cameo. Are there any plans to put your spin on that I this movie at all?

Well I know that Stephenie did not like the tulip on the cover. So we won’t seeing that. Let me see, I don’t know that there are any trick cameos per say, but every time I make a movie I definitely want there to be 20-30 moments where if you had a DVD and stopped it and really looked carefully to see what was going on…whether it be kind of strange bits of foreshadowing, sort of as though you could see into the future in certain scenes or whether it would just be little moments that passed by unnoticed, or details of the architecture of things. I love doing that sort of stuff.

Q: It sounds like it’s going to be very multilayered and well done.

Chris: Yeah I think I mean nothing in a bad way like placement advertising (Bella prefers Pepsi…drink Coke).

Part of my job in preproduction assembling the team to make the movie is to try to find the right people to make the movie that everyone cares about the details intentionally. So it is going to be incredibly layered intentionally.

And when for instance, all the kids who were all First Nations…they call them First Nations here, what you’d call Native Americans in America, went and saw Jacob’s house which you only saw for like 10 seconds I the movie…like just walking them through the house for the first time was a great experience because it…they’re like, “Wow, this feels just like the house I grew up in on the reservation.” And it wasn’t the reservation like what one imagines in a clichéd kind of way. It was just the fact that in La Push people have lots and lots of picture of their family up on the wall and little bits of carving, or this or that whatever it may be.

All these details were very carefully researched, that our production team went down to La Push and you know met people there. There are fun little details. A girl from La Push gave a member of our production team her first drum. You’re supposed to give away your first drum . It was really great. And so we put it in the movie. It’s there in the movie she’ll see it. Little things like that where it might be just a little reference from us to one person. These little things accrue and mean something.

Q:What has been your biggest challenge?

Chris It’s a challenge to make a movie anyway, especially one that’s coming out in November. Probably the biggest challenge will be getting it out on time and making sure that every little detail at least in my mind is right. I’m rather obsessive and I tend to be a worry-wart about things. You know going into it that there’s going to be a lot of interest, that people are going to see it. For me that’s not enough, like I really want to deliver on everything that I’ve promised. So that’s the really tough thing, making sure that you don’t just go do your job and go home. Every second is an opportunity either exploited or wasted to get something right basically.

Q: Do you have a composer in store for us?

Chris: Alexandre Desplatis going to be the composer who is extraordinary. He did the score for Benjamin Button, Golden Compass. He worked for Syriana. He is an extraordinary talent in general but especially for something that has a kind of romantic swoop to it. He has this kind of comprehensive familiarity for romantic music but can also work in multiple sizes of orchestra, multiple genres. He can work with synthesizers, work with ethnic percussion ensembles. He can work with symphonies. I know that he is going to do something beautiful. I also know that sometimes when we are shooting something that I am going to be leaving room for his music. And that’s going to be this other layer that is going to bring so much to it.

Q: Have you made any progress on the soundtrack yet. Any bands that you are looking at or have you thought about any particular songs or a tone that you are going for?

Chris: Of course a lot of the tone of the movie is melancholy, and so it’s kind of an opportunity to do the breakup album of all time. (laughs) And yeah there’s a bit room for songs that correspond more to Jacob and to his sunny quality his goodness. To be honest, no. I haven’t yet figured out who is going to be on the soundtrack yet. We are in a really nice position because Alexandra Patsavas, who was the music supervisor on the first movie, is coming back. We’re in a really great position of that album of having done so well that bands are now terribly interested.

Q: Do you have a preference underground bands or mainstream, do you have a preference as far as that?

Chris: Umm I really don’t have any particular preference. I would like it to be a mix basically. It’s whatever is right for the tone as long as it fits.

Q: Have you seen any costume designs for the Volturi. How is it different from the books.

Chris: It fits with the books.

Q: The Black cloaks?

Chris: Yes the black cloaks are all there. The degrees of blackness are very carefully kind of rationed out.

Q: The sets for the Volturi’s lair?

Chris: I think the set for the Volturi’s lair is going to be really interesting for the fans. It’s going to be really fun. It’s first of all one of the biggest sets I’ve ever seen. It’s one of the grandest that I’ve ever seen. It’s what it deserves. (Well they are the Volturi) They’re a big deal. (They don’t go small) No, they don’t go small. (laughs)I think it’s first of all just shooting Volterra itself obviously you have to get that right the race to the square and all that but when we get inside it’s going to be fairly extraordinary. I’m very happy with it.

Q: Are you filming the interiors here in Vancouver?

Chris: Were filming the interiors here. Yeah we’re building the interiors because we get to make up that interior and control it ourselves. The exteriors belong in Italy.

Q: How the chase seen looking, is it any longer, and changes?

Chris: Not really. No I think we are going to try to deliver down to the yellow Porsche to get the details right.