Director's Commentary Keynote

DIRECTOR’S

COMMENTARY:ROLLAND EMMERICH

BY EMMADELK

Friday, June 3, 2011

TITLE SHOTThe title shot shows an arial view flying over an ice shelf. The shot took two different production teams to make. The teams worked for 6-7 months on the shot. The director said that only in the last 6 weeks or so, he really began to see progress. They decided that the movie had to be photo-real from the beginning.


OPENING OUTSIDE SCENE

The opening shot is on the ice shelf where one man is working with a machine. This scene was all digital, like the sky and all of the ice. When he falls through the ice it was a mechanical effect. They used a mechanism for this effect. The line the man says, “I didn’t do anything,” was expected to get more of a laugh in the theaters.


INDIA SCENEDuring the beginning of the movie, there is a shot in the snow that was supposed to be set in India. The set was actually in Montreal. Many of the scenes that were set in different parts of the world, were shot in Montreal because of its European look. In the India set, the sky and the ground were digital. The building and everything else were the real thing.


HAIL SCENEThere is one scene in the movie that is set in Japan. A storm comes and huge hail begins to fall to the ground. Many people are killed. A lot of the ice on the ground was real. All of the hail falling from the sky was actually digital though.


CAR SCENEOne scene shows Jack and his son Sam riding in a car. The scene was filmed with a green screen outside the windows. When filming car scenes, this method isn’t used very often anymore. It was a risk to use a green screen because it usually always looks processed. They took the risk though and were very happy with the results.


AIRPLANE SCENE

There is a scene in the movie where three of the main characters are flying in an airplane. The plane experiences turbulence because of another storm. The inside of the plane wasn’t a real airplane. It was built by the crew. The plane was very expensive to make.


LONG HALL SHOTOne part of the movie shows Jack with some of his co-workers walking down a long hall discussing the storms. The shot was very complicated to film because it was so long. There were lots of windows along the hall, so there were also enormous light changes. That was the greatest challenge. They hired a great steady cam operator for the shot though and they rarely had out of focus shots.


WOOLY MAMMOTHThere is one shot where the kids go to a museum. They stop and look at a fake wooly mammoth behind glass. This shot was in and out of the movie. At then end, they finally decided to keep it. The wooly mammoth was supposed to be a foreshadowing of what would happen in the future with all the natural disasters.


STORY CHANGEHalfway through the production of the movie, Emmerich decided to change part of the script. He thought that the story of the movie wasn’t going anywhere. The other producers were angry with this, but it ended up better in the end. Emmerich says that you have to be willing to re-evaluate all through out the process of filming. You can’t be afraid to make major changes if something isn’t going right.


TEASER LINEThe line, “Save as many as you can,” Emmerich says, is one of the most important lines in the movie. Originally the put the line in the teaser. The director liked it, but during mixing they took it out. Upset, the director fought to get it put back in. Now it is the one part of the teaser that the audience remembers and says is their favorite.


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Director's Commentary Keynote