2016

I think the castle in A Cure for Wellness is very much from the same ilk as the hotel in The Shining. The mountainside setting as well on the Swiss Alps. It’s a marvel of Set Design. Long corridors, hallways, caskets, tubs, oxygen tanks, vast sized laboratories etc. Not to mention the high-ceiling dance room. Verbinski has always been good at long and extensive set designs (and blowing them up). But this is peak. It’s a great setting. A naturalistic, isolated setting like The Shining. One of the trademarks with Verbinski is his pale green color scheme. I think in general it’s his preferred color. But there are shades of yellow and blue that are always around. Blue is actually very pronounced and is the main theme in The Weather Man. A more colorful blue than usual. Luc Besson is perhaps even closer to Kubrick in style. With his extensive tracking shots (Anna is the peak in this department) and the colourful set designs. Exotic and beautiful high society locations. You always get something extremely colorful and full of life with him which makes him stand out in this era of filmmaking. I think he is a filmmaker who is very much capable of making a masterpiece but hasn’t made one yet. I wish he had more patience and restraint. I think both Verbinski and Besson have a tendency to go for excess and outrageousness with the material. Both of them are bursting with ideas and high concepts as well. They are big personalities and I think it’s a great shame mainstream Hollywood lost these two. No matter how big or medium sized the budgets are they know what they want to do and do it. I love the passion they infuse into each and every film. Very worthy Kubrick acolytes.

Some of the stories behind the making of Verbinski’s films are outrageous. The lengths he went to achieve Practical Effects. I gathered some snippets here.

“In A Cure for Wellness, The water tank scenes took two weeks to film. DeHaan and the director communicated through an intercom, and DeHaan wore a buoyancy and body-positioning waist harness connected with wires and an oxygen tank.”

“In A Cure for Wellness, Verbinski and the crew used a rubber drill in the scene where Dr. Brennan, the facility’s dentist, drills through Mr. Lockhart’s healthy tooth without anesthesia. According to DeHaan, he was genuinely nervous and his reaction was used in the filming. Verbinski stated that the scene had compositing, and DeHaan stated there was no outright CGI. DeHaan filmed the scene while wearing a dental gag and strapped to the chair.”

“In A Cure for Wellness, In the car crash scene, DeHaan was placed into a harness inside a device described by Bryan Alexander of USA Today as being similar to a rotisserie before being tossed around. DeHaan stated that he experienced his sole filming injury there, in which his arm was dislocated from and then relocated into the socket in its shoulder.”

“In The Lone Ranger, Armie Hammer recalled that the production budget was so extravagant that when needing to coach Tom Wilkinson on how to flip his pocket watch and chain, the world’s best yo-yo expert was flown in to teach Wilkinson, and continued to be on call during filming.”

“In The Lone Ranger, For the train scenes seen in the film, a large oval shaped track had to be built near Albuquerque, New Mexico, to have rail lines that went north, south, east, and west. There were a total of six railroad locations in the film, but the oval was the largest. All the work was done by the Gandy Dancer Railroad and Excavating Services, who brought in 3,889,425 pounds of 33-foot rail, bars, tie places, and ties from Blythe, California. The whole rail line had to be removed after filming was completed, because the rail line had no outside interchange.”

“In The Lone Ranger, The trains used in the film could reach 30 miles per hour, which was the standard speed for locomotives during that era. An EMD SW1500 diesel switcher was used for the scenes that did not show the steam locomotives.”

“In The Lone Ranger, The locomotives and rolling stock seen in the film were all built in a machine shop in Sun Valley, California. One of the two locomotives, a 4-6-0 or Ten-wheeler, was used in the beginning of the film and then was renovated into the “Constitution” locomotive seen later in the film. The other locomotive, a 4-4-0 or American, was based on the Central Pacific Jupiter that was on hand for the real Golden Spike Ceremony up on Promontory Point. For easy movement, the locomotives and rail cars were built in the same fashion as shipping containers so they could be added and removed from their chassis and then transported on flatbed trucks. This method was also used in part of the train chase scene that took place in the mountains since they could not build any railroad tracks up in the mountains.”

“In Rango, The movie was not motion captured. The actors actually perform the scenes as if making a live movie. And the footage was used as a reference to make the animation.”

“In PotC: At World’s End, The Singapore city was constructed out of 40 buildings within a tank that was 24 meters (78.7 feet) long, 40 meters (131.2 feet) wide, and one meter (3.2 feet) deep. Not much is known, historically, about 18th century Singapore, so the filmmakers based the set design on Chinese and Malaysian cities of the same period, in an Expressionist style.”

“In PotC: At World’s End, According to Gore Verbinski, the Singapore scenes were intended to parody spa culture. A naturally humid atmosphere was achieved with a careful combination of lighting equipment and gallons of water, and fungi were allowed to grow within the set, to enhance the mood.”

“In PotC: At World’s End, The climactic sea battle was shot in an air hanger at Palmdale, California, where the cast had to wear wetsuits underneath their costumes on angle-tipped ships. The water-drenched set was kept in freezing temperatures to prevent bacterial infection.”

“In PotC: At World’s End, The maelstrom sequence took ten weeks to film, and was extremely difficult for the actors. Keira Knightley said, “[The water is] literally in your eyes the entire time, and you’ve got an entire camera crew… coming at you.” Geoffrey Rush said, “When [my] costume is wet, I weigh 45 pounds more. And underneath, you can barely move.” Kevin McNally said, “Oh, my God. How wet can a man be?”

“In PotC: Dead Man’s Chest, Gore Verbinski wanted to keep the Flying Dutchman crew realistic, rejecting a character with a turtle shell, and the animators watched various David Attenborough documentaries to study the movement of sea anemones and mussels.”

“In PotC: The Curse of the Black Pearl, It was important to differentiate the Black Pearl crew members from one another even when they were in their skeleton form. The eyes used for the characters are actually the actors’ eyes, just one of the decisions made between Gore Verbinski and ILM to give the skeletal versions of the characters a personality. Likewise, in the end scene, Johnny Depp’s real eyes are used for skeleton Jack Sparrow. Verbinski notes that Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa is the only character in the film who delivers the typical, pirate, hard R.”

“In PotC: The Curse of the Black Pearl, After the box office failure of The Country Bears (2002), then Disney CEO Michael Eisner attempt to shut down production of the film because he thought it wouldn’t perform well and wasn’t a fan of Johnny Depp’s performance. However, Gore Verbinski told his concept artists to keep working on the picture, and when Eisner came to visit, the executive was astonished by what had been created.”

“In PotC: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Gore Verbinski talks about two terms that were created on set, “visual effects ad lib” and “stunt ad lib.” Verbinski would come up with stunts and action beats on set that he would pitch to stunt coordinator George Ruge, and the coordinator would devise how to perform the action right then and there. Sometimes this would come after months of rehearsing one action only to throw in a different stunt to replace it on the spot. One such stunt was the one at the end of the film where Sparrow launches up out of the water and lands on the deck of his ship.”

“In MouseHunt, The mousetraps scene was completed without any digital effects. Over 800 mousetraps were set individually and rigged with wires under the floor. It took several takes, so each trap had to be reset, baited, and wired one at a time.”

“In MouseHunt, While close-ups used an animatronic rodent, and some scenes involved CGI, most shots were made using a team of 60 field mice trained by animal trainer Boone Narr. The mice were trained for everything from running and climbing to sleeping in a sardine can underneath a tissue paper blanket.”

“In MouseHunt, Having analyzed mountains of reference material, the Winston team used soft foam to construct the mouse body. “A mouse is a very squishy little animal,” said Mahan. “It’s always compressing or inflating. It can go under little cracks in doors because it’s so flexible. So we thought we’d make him light and floppy-looking rather than have too many hard skeletal structures inside. That way, we could flatten him down or puff him up.” From a sculpture by Paul Mejias, the body was fabricated by Lynette Eklund with small metal legs that were then attached and covered in silicone skin.”

The contrast in dynamic between Jena Malone and Abbey Lee in The Neon Demon to them in Horizon: American Saga – Chapter 1 is striking.

@Drake- Have you seen Christine (2016) from Antonio Campos?