måndag 20 september 2010

The Province Interview: David Slade Speaks About Eclipse (Canada)

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Slade started work on Eclipse when the sec ond Twi light movie, New Moon, was fin ished but before it had been released.
“This huge, enor mous zeit geist of a thing hadn’t quite hap pened yet,” he says, adding that when the tide of scream ing fans did build around the film set, he was too busy to pay much attention,
The film’s secu rity peo ple would erect fences at exte rior loca tions to keep fans far away, and Slade would be at work in the back of a car for the ride to set each day. “Just get ting it done became a thou sand ques tions — swatch cards, costume approvals, sto ry boards. I would have my head in my notes.”
He remem bers see ing fans with flow ers stand ing in the rain as cast and crew left work after an all-night shoot in the woods one night. “I’ve got a lot of respect for those kids — God that’s tenac­ity. I have a lot of time for the sub cul tures that bring kids together, regard less of sub ject mat ter. Often it’s just a good solid source for peo ple to bond.”
Slade says he saw Eclipse as more of a romance.
“Within the two pulling forces of romance and ter ror, I wanted to try and sam ple both,” he says. “I don’t think they really did it [in the pre vi ous Twi light movies] so much. I wanted Rob [Pat tin­son] to be scary. I wanted him to have a vis ceral qual ity, where a flash of his eyes kind of made it look like he could kill.”
Slade says he approached Eclipse as a stand alone film. “There are films that came before, and you inherit cast and crew … but I really didn’t spend any time study ing the other movies.”
He says he met more than once with each actor indi vid u ally before start ing rehearsals together, “back ground cast, all the Cullen fam ily, the wolves, all those guys — as many as I pos si bly could in the time that I had.”
He got them to talk about what they liked and didn’t like about the ear lier films, and in sub se­quent meet ings he talked with them about what he wanted.
“You have to take the best of what they’ve done, acknowl edge that it’s good, and what’s not good, take them to a good place to start work,” he says.
Another thing he did was to move video mon i tors away from the set, so the actors wouldn’t worry about what they looked like.
“They con cen trated on the moment, that I felt worked,” he says. “Par tic u larly peo ple who are doing they same role sev eral times … they could be [say ing] ‘Am I doing that look again?’”
Slade talks about scene struc ture, say ing most scenes have the same three-act form as an entire movie, and quotes Plato on the bal ance between craft and form.
“I’m going to sound like a wanker now for men tion ing Plato,” says Slade. “For Twi light, we’re not talk ing about the great est art, but about try ing to cre ate some thing that works, that peo ple respond to.”


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