Chucky... Behind The Scenes

Photo credited to Google

Today I will talk about a very special movie, a movie that has given us nightmares since we were kids. The movie is Chucky! Chucky has been terrorizing children and adult's dreams since 1988. Five movies have come out after this 1988 and we will have a new movie in 2017. This serial killer doll has progressed through the movies physically. I don't know personally what looks creeper, the good and innocent looking Chucky or the beat up full of stitches Chucky. With Chucky you get his famous wife, Tiffany, also a killer doll. So let's go on and talk about how they made this terrorizing doll.

 Photo Credited to Google

It takes about three technicians to control Chucky. All three of them move his eyebrow, mouth, head. However, in general it takes about fifteen people to make Chucky move the way that he does. These people control his whole body movement from his head to his little pinky and wrist. In some scenes of the movies, Chucky is acted out by a kid or a short person. They use them when they either have him running, climbing, killing, and other physical parts of his character. However, the majority of it is a robot. Chucky is a robot! They have different heads for Chucky since he has evolution through the years. They also have different bodies and body pieces because in some movies he is either burned or chopped up.

Photo Credited to Google

As for Tiffany, she came as an idea when one of the producers was at a video store and he saw a copy of the bride of frankenstein and he thought it would be cool if Chucky had a bride. They created her slowly because they wanted to make her as realistic as they could and it is difficult because the dolls are about two feet tall so they have a small figure to work with. Their point was to make her just as psychotic as Chucky and that she really does contemplate Chucky's personality. Together they make one.

Photo Credited to Google

Pitch Perfect... Behind The Scenes

 So today I wanted to do a very fun movie. We have all heard about Pitch Perfect, and surely almost everyone has seen it. If you haven't, it's about a group of acapella groups in a university that compete against each other and against other groups for the major title. Well I was interested in how the idea to create a movie about acapella groups came to be. Believe it or not the movie was a low budget movie with only $17 million and because of it's huge success it made $115.4 million. The idea came up to Elizabeth Banks and her husband when they read a book proposal. It took about three years to bring the movie to different movie companies. Finally Universal Studios took on the job and decided to bring it to life.

The preparation these actors had to take was intense even though it looked easy. The actors had to go through four weeks of intense training in both dancing and singing. Keep in mind that the majority of these actors never sang or danced in their lives. They got choreographer Aakomon "AJ" Jones to do create the dance routines for the different numbers in the movies. According to Elizabeth Banks and all audiences, he did a magnificent job. He had the actors train for about ten hours a day for those four weeks. There was blisters in their feet and some even cried but overall their experience was bond and enrichment. The actors also had to take singing classes. This they called it "Acapella Bootcamp" which is the training of their voices. For example, Hanna Mae Lee had to go with a DJ in order to teach her different techniques that would allow her to beat box.

After all this hard work, the movie was finally made in a total of 31 days!!! How's that for a deadline. However, their movie became such a success that it even got a second part to it and it's working in making a third sequel to it. The second movie was an even more success than the first one and it looks that the third one is going to be the same.

The Life of Pi... Behind The Scenes

The movie I will be talking about today is Life of Pi.  The Life of Pi is a very magical and exceptional movie that has won the audience's heart. It explores several themes, like survival, fear, loneliness, personal growth, and friendship. This movie was nominated for three golden globes, winning two and 11 Academy Awards, winning four. On both awards shows it won best picture. However, such a successful movie has its setbacks and challenges.

For starters, the book is very creative and to make into film was going to be a very challenging task. It was going to take a director that could truly understand and relate to the story. Some directors took an interest to the script but they weren't right to bring it to life until Ang Lee.

Another challenge was the graphics to create the tiger. They did actually have a real tiger to stand in the boat and move around the boat in order to study the movements his body made. From then the visual effects people switched from the real life tiger to the CGI tiger back and forth in the movie, to which according to them it has never been done before. Their computers had to adapt to how fast the movements of this tiger was since are very fast and then wanted to achieve realism. It was important for it to look real because it's character is very essential to be believable.

As for the actor he was just a regular kid from Dheli. His brother was the one that went to audition for the role and he was just there to support and accompany him. Suraj Sharma was told to give it a shot because of his age. He did and then they called him back. Six months later, he met with the producers and did one final audition. He was later told he got the role.

Titanic... Behind The Scenes

Have you ever wondered how the Titanic was made? Today I will discuss the challenges the cast and crew had to go through in order to achieve this wonderful film. To begin with, the films' budget is $200 million and it gained $2.187 billion dollars at the box office. The film is 195 minutes long or 3 hours and 15 minutes long. Titanic was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, winning 11 of those 14. 

Photo credited to Google

So how they started the beginning of the film and the shots of the ship underwater was by creating a smaller version of the Titanic to best of the crews knowledge of how the ship looked like. They rehearsed how they were going to shoot the scenes of the inside of the Titanic. They had to find a way to use the technology that they had at that time  (1997) because they went two miles down into the ocean and the pressure of the water is what made everything critical. The first sunken ship scenes in the film are the actual Titanic and nobody had done that before. Of course they did create several sets to film some of the things that couldn't come out perfectly clear. They photographed several parts of the actual Titanic and took it as an inspiration to build other sets and props for the movie and they tried to make as realistic as possible. 

Photo credited to Google

The crew did use a lot of CGI for many of the scenes. Some examples are the moving water, the sailing ship, the people walking in the boats, and the ship sinking. The literally built the Titanic ship to its' full size and width, however, they only built half of it. Building a set and prop this big costs a lot of money and time. So they did do some of the filming on the ship to give it a more realistic feel to what was happening but the majority of the film uses a really small model of the ship. For instance, the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio screams "I'm the king of the world" was filmed in a separate set that was a green model of the ships nose and with green screen on the back. Then they placed Leo on the animated version of the small Titanic model, added some , and some birds in the sky, and voila there is that wonderful scene. On a separate side, Cameron had the crew built realistic sets of what it was like inside the ship. The beautiful staircase where Jack stretches out his hand to Rose was built by hand. The walls, the ceiling, the pictures and ornaments in the back, every little detail was built by hand and put there to honor the real one. In the dining room the cutlery had to be searched for because it had to have the right design, the glass ware had to be authentic of that era, the tableware and the carpet was all authentic. For the sinking scenes, Cameron had the big titanic ship prop actually sink. That was devastating! Such a wonderful and big ship and they just sunk it. for several of the scenes they created different sets of the sinking ship that could tilt and make the people fall off. 

                                                         

Photo credited to Google

The last thing that took a lot of work was the costume. It was all about research research research and more research! The costume designer had to look and buy for authentic 1912 attire for both men and women. They searched from the underwear, to the stockings, to the garter, and jewelry. They acquired an entire collection that belonged to one woman from that time. Every woman from the film including the extras in the back where given a beautiful dress from that time, of course, that meant that every woman had to wear a corset. They actually had a backstage corset users resting chair for the women because the corset of that time was very restricting therefore they needed help. 

Fast & Furious 7... Behind The Scenes

Photo credited to Google

So we all know about this amazing movie franchise that people always look forward to watching through the years. We definitely know about the big and exaggerated stunts the movie takes on so that is what I will discuss today. How do they do all that? Is it CGI? 

GIF credited to Google

We are going to start with the car stunts. I have never in my life seen so many beautiful cars get destroyed over and over again. The first scene I will mention is the famous cars falling out of the airplanes scene. I will dare to say that the director James Wan is crazy and brilliant. As you can see from the GIF, the director had stunt actors throw themselves before the car fell out of the plane and after the car fell out of the plane in order to film the front and back of the cars. Some of the stunt actors had to hold on the car while it's falling in order to film a close shot of the car, give the car's point of view as it's falling from the plane, and then had to push himself away from the flying car in order to get the wide shot.They did have a helicopter filming around to record everything from the sky's point of view. They did have the challenge of how they were going to land a car in a road on a mountain and still keep driving after it has landed. Well, they literally threw several cars in order to test how they managed themselves on air. If they close the cars' windows the car would at some point stabilize itself and stopped moving all over the place. For the landing they had this crane pull the car as high as it could, I think it was about 200 feet up in the air and release the car to slide down a wire and as it got at about 12 feet close to the ground the car was released to be driven. All this was actually done in the mountains so that's pretty impressive. 

Photo Credited to Google

This next scene is about the car flying from one building to another and then to another. Of course the cars didn't fly out of such a big and tall building but it did fly out of a 40 feet tall building, which in my opinion it is still impressive. The building from where they fly out are real the are in the city of Abu Dhabi and the director basically photo shopped the car scene with the scenery of Abu Dhabi. The did recreate some of the inside of these buildings in order to film the action scenes. Once again the challenge was to create a beautiful and "controlled" landing from the flying car. So they created a 3 foot high and 120 feet long runway so the car had enough time to speed up and create the landing. 

Snow White... Behind The Scenes

Since I have been talking about animation I am going to talk about the first animated movie made. It is Walt Disney's Snow White. Disney's animation project started in 1935 when he dreamed of making the first animated movie and it made its first appearance to the public in 1937. In the first sketches of Snow White she had more of a resemblance to Betty Boop with big black curly hair, round eyes, and tiny waist but Walt Disney thought she looked to cartoon-like. He wanted her to look more human and realistic.

Photo credited to Google

Disney sent all of his artists back to school in order to bring this movie which was first of its kind. He set up a school of action analysis where all of the animators studied every piece of human movement to create convincing animation.The process begins with placing and laying out the script of the film in comic book form. They drew a total of 24 separate drawings for every second in the film. Each drawing had to be slightly different than the other so when they flipped through the pages consecutively it would look as though the character was moving. Just imagine 24 drawings per second! The film is 1 hr 28 mins, therefore, they had to draw a total of 126, 720 drawings!!!

750 artists used more than 500 miles of paper to make a total of 2 million drawing and sketches. Walt Disney literally invested all of his money and savings into this film making it vital for the film to be successful. It was because Disney went on to win an Oscar. In this photo Shirley Temple is presenting Walt Disney with an Oscar and 7 little Oscars.

Photo credited to Google

These two women are the ones that gave Snow White voice and image. The one on the top is Marjorie Celeste Belcher, she was the one that was hired to do all the movements for Snow White. The animators had her dance and they studied the way she moved and captured in drawing. How she danced was exactly the same on the film. The one on the bottom is Adriana Caselotti. Her role was vital because she was what was going to heard by everyone. Over 150 girls auditioned to be the voice of Snow White, but Disney wanted a more young and girlish voice. Adriana, who happened to be listening to one of her father's conversation with Snow White's casting director on another phone, started singing in a girl's voice and she was cast. At the time she was 20 years old. 

Photo credited to Google (Marjorie)

Photo credited to Google (Adriana)

Finding Nemo... Behind The Scenes

                                            Photo Credited to Google

Today, we will move unto one of my favorite Disney movies, Finding Nemo. The film went on to earn a total of $936,743,251 worldwide. The inspiration for the movie began for several moments in the directors life. He chose a clownfish because he saw them in a National Geographic magazine. He remembered that as a boy he would like to go to the dentist to see the pretty fish tank. He also says, that when he took a walk in the park with his son he was very over protective and didn't quite enjoy the moment as much. Sounds familiar? 

To start off this project, the executive producer told every person that was going to work in the Nemo project that they had to get certified in scuba diving and go underwater to observe these animals natural habitat.Sometimes, Bob Peterson (the co-writer of the story) would drive for 6 hours all the way to Los Angeles and would throw out and discuss different ideas with another team member. One of those ideas is the famous initiation scene inside the fish tank. 

The first step to bring the characters about is the sketching and it starts with the art directors. They needed so much scientific input in order to capture what a real fish looks like. The hardest part of their job is to make a believable real-looking animated fish. For example, a real fish has their eyes on the side of their head not in front like Nemo, or Dory or any other character in the movie, also fish don't talk, or blink, or give off any emotion so the art directors had to find a way to do so. Next, they have to give the sculptor a 2D drawing so they can make into 3D. The directors start to give their feedback on it and model it correctly before giving it off to the animators. For the animators, the process is very meticulous. They have to be very aware of how the fish swims, what fins it moves, and finally how to give it human characteristics. The director talks to the animators and would make them think like actors. The scene where Dory didn't want to be left by Marlin came by the animator surrounding himself by things that would remind him of the people he loved and imagined they were going to leave in order to achieve that desperate and sad expression Dory has. 

Art director sketch

Sculptors' results

Animation 

The entire crew worked on Finding Nemo for 3 and a half years!!! That is a very long time to work on a project. Based on the interviews I saw, the first screening of the film is always the one that had the crew on a nervous breakdown in part because of course they want success but imagine working on something so hard for almost 4 years and for it to flop. However, the first two screening Finding Nemo had was the best Pixar animation had during that time. 

The Avengers... Behind The Scenes

Today we are going for a more fantasy like movie. This time I will be talking about the Avengers! We all know about this movie's great special effects and action scenes but what exactly do the actors have to do in order to achieve the great superheroes on camera?

First off, the majority of the movie is filmed in green screen. The crew does create some realistic scenery for the actors to use like in this photo where Black Widow is riding a Chitauri (alien) she is riding a replica of what the alien ship looks like in the movie and an actor in a CGI costume and Hawkeye shooting his arrows from a very tall skyscraper when in reality he is shooting from the replica of the skyscraper that is only 3 feet tall. These green and blue screens are represent different parts of New York, buildings, streets, or the city in general.

Photo credited to Google

Second, the movie uses CGI in order to achieve anything from lightning coming out of Thor's hammer to the Hulk coming to life. The Hulk for example is basically Mark Ruffalo in a CGI suit just making expressions and moving very exaggerated for the camera in order to achieve the Hulk going on a rampage. The actors have to sometimes pretend to fight something that is not there. Imagine that! They have to do their action scenes basically alone. Of course, there are times where just like Ruffalo there are people dressed in CGI suits in order to help the actor. Usually those people are the stunt people.

Photo credited to Google

Lastly, the actors have to practice practice practice! What I mean about practice is that the actors have to specialize themselves in some form of marital art in order to do their famous fighting scenes. It's not always that the actor has a stunt double to do all their scenes. Jeremy Renner specializes in four different fighting styles to achieve his action roles. Scarlett Johansson specialized in Wushu Style to get a lean physique while learning how to fight. She actually trained for months in order to get Black Widow to where she is now. For fight scenes Robert Downey Jr. isn't in the Iron Man suit, most of the time it is a stunt double. Chris Hemsworth just focused on his muscle build rather than fight since what he does is mostly with Thor's hammer. Mark Ruffalo luckily doesn't have to do much because the Hulk does all the action scenes and for that there is CGI. This photo is Jeremy Renner practicing a fight scenes with stunt people.

GIF credited to Google

American Sniper... Behind The Scene

  Photo credited to Google

Probably all of us know who the American war hero United States Navy SEAL Chris Kyle is, if not he is the deadliest sniper in American history with a total of 150 confirmed kills. Bradley Cooper and director Clint Eastwood bring the biographical war film American Sniper to life as they show Chris Kyle before and after the war. However, what challenges did the movie have? What did the actors go through to achieve this great film.

At first, Chris Kyle didn't really approve of Bradley Cooper to play him because he was too pretty. According to Cooper, Kyle told him he would tie him in the back of his truck and drag him a little to knock some of the pretty off of him. Because Chris Kyle was heavier and bigger in physique Cooper had to bulk up 40 pounds of pure muscle. Imagine eating 5 full meals in one day! That's a lot of food. Kyle was from Texas so Cooper had to meet with a dialect coach to teach the actor the Texan accent Kyle had which he described as learning a new language. Cooper watched countless of films and chewed "fake" tobacco in order to stay true to Kyle. Former Navy SEAL sniper Kevin Lacz was hired to train cooper on how to hold and shoot different kinds of weapons and hit targets 600 yards away.

The film was going to have Steven Spielberg as its director but because the film only had the budget of $60 million he dropped out and Eastwood picked it up. Kyle was partly involved with the writing portion of the film but was sadly murdered a year before they started filming.  Kyle's wife, Taya, called him after Kyle's death and told Hall, the writer, to film this movie to best of his ability because her children were going to remember their father the way he portrays Kyle. Eastwood likes to shoot his scenes with little or no rehearsal so part of the movie was filmed once and without rehearsal which is pretty amazing because most directors take up to 35 takes maybe even more. 

The Theory of Everything... Behind The Scenes

                    Eddie Redmayne & Stephen Hawking (photo from google)

So most of us have heard about the genius bound to a wheelchair speaking through a machine, Stephen Hawking. If you haven't The Theory Of Everything starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, is a biographical drama film based on Stephen Hawking's personal life and his struggles with ALS. This film was nominated for best picture, best actor (Redmayne), best actress (Jones), best adapted screenplay, and best original score at the 87th Academy Awards. Eddie Redmayne was the only one to win on both the Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. However, what are the challenges? What did the actors go through in order to achieve such great film?

Based on countless interviews from the actors and director, on of the biggest challenges was Eddie Redmayne's physical preparation to portray Stephen Hawking's progress from a healthy young man to where he is at right now. Redmayne had to first get himself educated about the condition so he visited ASL hospitals in order to get himself familiarized with what he was going to be portraying. After that he had to go to a dance instructor in order to show Redmayne how to control his muscles individually and how to shorten them. Since the filming is not done in sequence, Redmayne was jumping from when Hawking was first diagnosed with ASL to when ASL was very advanced in his body so Redmayne had to learn how to change his muscles completely in that same day. 

Both Redmayne and Jones met the actual Stephen Hawking and Jane Hawking with their children. For both actors that was an unforgettable experience and also a nerve wrecking experience because they were in instances performing in front of the actual people they were portraying. Redmayne says that when he first met Stephen Hawking he spent the first 40 minutes talking to Stephen Hawking about Stephen Hawking. In order to achieve his role Redmayne Spend months preparing for his role and did countless studying on Hawking and his life. He studied every video there was of him and every photograph in order to grasp what Stephen was going through.  

Dallas Buyers Club- Behind The Scenes

Picture taken off of Google

The movie that I am going to be discussing this week is Dallas Buyers Club. This movie came out in 2013 but I think the preparation the actors went through to achieve the characters of this movie is worthy to mention and write about. This movie  won best motion picture at the 71st Golden Globes. In the 86th Academy Awards and 71st Golden Globes, Matthew McConaughey won best actor and Jared Leto won best supporting actor. However, what were the challenges to make this movie? What did the actors go through to achieve their characters goal?  

To start off, I once again watched countless of interviews and read many articles to truly find the obstacles the director and actors went through, and the first one I found was that it took 20 years for anyone to take on the movie, it was rejected a total of 137 times. When it was finally done the film was faced with the budget of only $5 million, with that the makeup artists only had $250 to turn the actors into their real life counterparts. To top that off, the cast and crew had only 25 days to film the entire movie. 

As for Matthew McConaughey, who plays a homophobic man that was diagnosed with HIV and Jared Leto, a transsexual with HIV that turns into AIDS, both had to lose an immense amount of weight. McConaughey lost nearly 50 pounds by restricting his diet to only 5 ounces of fish and a cup of vegetables twice a day. He exercised each day burning 1,800 calories each day for two weeks straight. The actor himself had to invest his own money to carry out this movie. 

 Leto lost 30 or 40 pounds by simply not eating. Leto admitted it left him very fragile because his body changed drastically, his final weight was about 114- 116 lbs. He really wanted to get into his role of a transsexual woman that he went to hang out with transgender community to understand them and so he could his into the right mindset of his charactor Rayon. In order to stay in character Jared Leto spoke and acted like Rayon even when they weren't filming so as each day passed he could grasp his character even better. The change was so drastic that both actors made headlines everywhere after pictures of both of them in character surfaced. 

The Revenant- Behind The Scenes

So most of us have all heard about the spectacular movie The Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio and director Alejandro Inarritu. If you haven't it's based on the life of real of Hugh Glass an American Explorer of the late 18th century. The Revenant has a very real and violent appearance to it and have heard about the challenges there were to film such a complicated film. However, what are the challenges? What did the actors go through in order to achieve such great film?

Based on countless interviews from both the actors and the director, they named the weather to be the most challenging. Director Alejandro Inarritu said that it was hard to film because he faced changing weather patterns every day. He filmed the majority of the film in Alberta, Canada but by the end of the film the snow wasn't there so they had to relocate all the way to the southern tip of Argentina. Because of the harsh weather conditions, he only had one hour and half to film each day! The majority of his day, however, was spent walking with the cast & crew from one location to the other. Some of the crew members actually quit halfway of the shooting. Director Inarritu decided to film the movie in sequence of events because he wanted the actors to follow through with the emotions they were feeling the day before.

For the actors, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, Domhall Gleeson, and more had to go through very harsh temperatures to film the movie. For instance, the temperature was sub zero the majority of the time for the whole 9 months it took to record the movie. Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Poulter had to actually go into these freezing waters several times in order to get the perfect shot. The actors rehearsed for 4 months prior to the first shooting of the movie. However, they rehearsed one scene all day long until that hour and half window to shoot as much as they could, i.e. taking advantage of the natural lighting. Both DiCaprio and Hardy were taught the Arikara Indigenous Language  They had all the actors meet with several advisers in order to understand the people that actually lived in that time period, especially Hugh Glass, in order to have the right mindset and achieve the right approach to each character. Leonardo DiCaprio actually had to eat raw fish and raw bison liver in order to portray his character more realistically. He took six months to grow his beard like Hugh Glass as much as possible. DiCaprio had to rehearse 3 weeks to do that iconic bear scene where his back and throat gets ripped right open.

Credit: Twentieth Century Fox