We visited the Pittsburgh set of The Dark Knight Rises one relentlessly hot day last summer. What follows is the second and final part of our chats with the cast and crew behind Christopher Nolan's swan song to the Batman film franchise. (Part 1 of our set visit can be found HERE).
Be advised that there are SOME SPOILERS ahead ...
The Man Behind Batman's Wonderful Toys (No, Not Lucius Fox)
Special effects supervisor Chris Corbould on the film's biggest challenge: "I think it was getting all our head around the fact that we had to top Dark Knight. Getting all the creative juice flowing to format this film so we've got a great film for everybody so they won't be disappointed. There were a lot of very. very intense meetings going on about story line, what we could do, how we could change things, and how we could change digital effects. It was a very, very intense period, generally shorter than what we're used to. In Batman Begins, when we were building the tumblers, I think we had eight months to build them. Probably the Batpod was bit shorter, seven months. (Nolan) is very into his machines. He knows every single bit of them. He's deigned it with the Batpod and the Batmobile we started with a model this big, and what we built was almost identical to the little, plastic model. Every step of the way, whether it be the size of the tires, the color of the black-- I didn't even know there were so many shades of black. The Batmobile was like four different shades. To me, they look black, but he sees some difference in them. He's very meticulous in every single vehicle, gadget, costume... He's very, very intimate with that."
Dressing Bane and Catwoman
Costume designer Lindy Hemming on Catwoman's costume: "It's very, very simple. And she's the kind of female version of Batman in a way. She's someone who's produced a suit which has a technology of its own which is in the fabric. She has her own functional items which she needs. She has a custom-made belt with tiny -- everything to do with burglary, looking at jewelry. She has a belt which is full of those things all miniaturized for that. The tech in the fabric is our own creative tech. It's not a special fabric. We made it ourselves by screen printing the under-layer and putting a very thin, silky over layer on. We wanted to keep her very, very light, very creeping-about. Not robotic or anything like that. And we didn't want it to be rubbery or shiny like the previous Michele Pfeiffer suit. We didn't want it to have any implication of being a bondage or sex kind of suit. It was to be something functional but you wear when you're trying to creep about in the dark, not be visible."
Hemming on making Catwoman's "ears" work: "Christopher Nolan and I were trying to work out how we were going to keep it modern and trendy and cool. ... We said, 'What is forming these ears? What's the logic to have the ears?' And the logic you will see behind the ears is that when the goggles go up, the shape of the goggles makes the ears. And we think it's really cool. We went through so many incarnations of how to make it happen. I don't know how many of you have seen jewelers, when they've got the jeweler loupe. Or when you go to the dentist -- that was my inspiration -- and they're looking at you, and they've got the thing that looks into your mouth. They've got magnification and everything. Both of us looking at different versions of that, and then we employed the sunglasses. ... We started making our version of night-vision goggles-- or magnification goggles when she's doing her cat burgling. We made it so that when it goes up, it falls into ears."
Hemming on Bane: "When you look at the comic version of Bane, he's this massive man. He wearing a wrestling suit, and it's a bit difficult to imagine how you could translate that into a Chris Nolan film because everyone is meant to have a real background and come from real story. So with Bane you can see him with his mercenary men and you can know in the story where he's come from and why he is like he is. Following that route, he's much more armored with a nod toward the straps of the wrestling suit he started with. He's got an injury which is why in the comic he has to have the venom. In our story, it's slightly different, but it's the same kind of idea. Using all those things, and using the fact that he doesn't come form the same technology as Batman -- he doesn't have Fox making all these things for him -- his stuff has been made on-the-move, over the mountains of the world, maybe in training camps. He's the guy who's had his stuff made by different people along the way. So there is a sort of slightly clunky element to him, and that's part of his story. But at the same time, the way he's directed in the film, is the menace within him because he's a wrestler. And he's also an older character. He's not a young kid. He's an older man who, as you'll see in the film, you'll know he's been around for a long time. The reason he looks like he looks is he's much more a warrior, mercenary kind of man."
On Bane's mask: "We wanted it to be like an animal. I wanted it to have an animalistic feeling, and I looked at things like silverback gorillas and snarling teeth, fangs coming up and fangs coming down. You're getting sort of what it is. ... We all decided early on that if you have a film where two people are wearing a mask -- we didn't want when they're fighting together, Batman and him, to look the same. And Bane's mask in the comic is this sort of black, wrestling mask thing, and you can't see any of his face. So my first thing was animals, and my second thing with Chris-- and it was his idea really-- is how on Earth can we make this man not look the same as the other man when they're fighting? So just between working, drawing, looking at reference pictures of animals and everything, we came up with the idea that the [mask is partially covering his face] so the mask is functioning. The painkillers are being fed down into here, and it could be that his face is damaged. We don't know. And I think we didn't mind about the fact that it would limit his vocal abilities because it's a film, and we can put that in or do whatever we want with that afterwards. But it seemed to make him more menacing [for] this bit to be hidden."
A Chat With Mayor Garcia
Actor Nestor Carbonell on the mayor's stance in TDKR: "The mayor definitely feels that he is not for a vigilante coming in here and solving crime this way. It's just not the way that he envisions things. I think that there is an ego element to him. This is a man who wants to restore law and order. This is a man who is very much for putting out legislation where he has the freedom to really go after criminals, to really pursue them in a hard way. You know, I'm not saying he's going to violate civil liberties, but this is a man who is very much tough on crime and takes it upon himself to take on criminals headfirst. And no, he does not appreciate someone like The Batman to come in here and solve problems. ... With a man like this, from his point of view, he's absolutely against corruption, and if he's done anything within his teneur as mayor, it's to fight the mob head-on. Now, we have these lunatics running around doing their own thing, and they're essentially terrorists. That's a different thing altogether, but in terms of handling organized crime, this is a man who's dead set against that existing. He makes it part of his campaign."
Batman and Bane Work (and Fight) Well Together
Stunt coordinator Tom Struthers on working with Christian Bale and Tom Hardy: "Christian is very, very disciplined. Christian is one of these people where you can show him something once or twice, walk him through it, and after two or three days, a major fight sequence which has maybe 200 different moves in it-- a very, very long fight when we're filming one-- he picks it up very, very well. So does Tom I must say. Both are very easy to work with. They both pick up choreography, of the fighting, of the style. And then Chris will insert the drama that he wants and the moods and feels and the flow of it. ... They have a good chemistry because they're both physical actors, and they're both physical people that both get out and do stuff. It just makes a big difference when we're putting it on the screen because that bit flows, and then they can concentrate on the drama that they need to give to the director. And they're easy people to work with."
Maintaining Secrecy in the Age of iPhones and Twitter
TDKR co-producer Jordan Goldberg: "It's amazing how much it's changed since we shot The Dark Knight. With The Dark Knight, it was usually about a day before things got on the Internet. Now it's like within two minutes it's on the Internet. I think it's fun because on one hand, it's a love/hate thing because people are really that enthusiastic about the project that they want to be the first person to post something out there, which is cool. And ultimately, the comments I've seen so far have been very positive. But you're very wary about it sometimes because you don't want to ruin the surprise. When people are filming you filming a movie, you don't want to ruin the illusion of the film. All these movies, they're kind of like magic tricks. You don't want to have people see behind the scenes because we want [to conceal] tricks."
The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20.
Source : ign[dot]com
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