WEBVTT - Christopher McQuarrie / "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:17.640 M M. You're listening to Playback a Variety I Heart 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:21.119 Radio podcast. I'm your host, Variety Awards Editor Chris Tapley. 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:24.639 This week, we have director Christopher mcquarie stopping by to 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:26.520 discuss his new film. You might have heard of this 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.160 one mission Impossible Fallout. We talked about all of the 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:33.840 death defying action he and Madman Tom Cruise captured on camera, 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:37.199 and a whole lot more. So Sit tight. This is playback. 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:53.120 I saw your tweet. I think it was yesterday. You 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:56.480 were tweeting out the places that are protecting on film. Yes, 0:00:57.160 --> 0:00:59.680 and I'm from North Carolina. Oh wow. And then one 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:03.200 of them, Tarboro, North Carolina, Yah, which is like I 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:07.240 was stunned. Of all the places, it's just out close 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:10.880 to the coast. Somebody, uh, somebody sent me a photograph 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:14.080 of one of the theaters that I had that I 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:22.520 had a right take care. Um, it's just it was 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:25.959 very They sent me just this picture of a dilapidated, 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:31.360 broken down and run down both inside and outside, and 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:33.320 they were like, really, is this where you're sending us 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.200 And I didn't have a chance to respond to them, 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:38.720 but it was like that's where I grew up. I 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:42.200 grew up watching movies and theaters like that. Same. Thanks, 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:48.559 what movies are all? Right? What we're recording? Okay, jump 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:53.640 in thirty minute conversation. Relax, you're back from the tour. Yes, 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:56.760 we're here with Christopher mcquarie everyone, the writer and director 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:02.000 of Mission Impossible Fallout. Uh. You're gonna run out of 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:05.560 subtitles after a while, you know. We had a we 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:08.960 had a subtitle generator. Oh yeah. The studio put it 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:11.800 together because coming up with the title is is always 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:14.160 a bit of a of a production in and of itself. 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:17.160 And they put together a list of It was almost 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:20.880 like the Knocklist. It was a list of different kind 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:22.960 of spy words and you could pick one off of 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:26.960 each each column. There were two columns, and they were 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:28.960 the worst titles you could have ever possibly there were, 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:31.079 there were, there was no good company. You gotta hear some. 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:33.959 I can't really remember them. I wish I had the 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:36.840 rest here, but it was. It was quite awful. Do 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:39.560 a parody version of the film with one of those. Uh, 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:41.480 first of all, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:44.520 I saw the movie a few weeks ago. I was 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:46.200 blown away. As I was telling you earlier, I was 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:50.200 just very much dausted afterwards and like the best of ways. Uh, 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:53.000 you know, watching Tom cruise to his thing and just 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:55.840 that this movie sends you out on the biggest high 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:58.480 because of the finale you guys constructed. But we'll get 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:02.200 into that. Uh. I want to start just to go 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:04.320 back a little bit whenever you first came onto the 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:08.919 franchise and uh Rogue Nation on the last film, Uh 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:12.519 coming into it, what kind of like aesthetic ideas did 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:15.440 you have. I mean I kind of felt like, you know, 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:19.799 JJ revitalized the series, uh twelve years ago now, which 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:23.120 is crazy. I had Brad bird On recently talking about 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:25.560 incredible stupid We talked to him. I felt what Brad 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:27.880 did really sent things heading in the direction that you 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:30.960 guys have been shipping away out lately. And so when 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:32.760 you came in, I just want to know what you 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:34.520 wanted to do to really put your stamp on it 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:39.720 on on Rogue. What I decided to do was something 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:42.960 of the greatest hits. I was going to bring back. Ah. 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:45.120 I was going to bring back the members of the 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:48.839 team that that it felt like people had responded most 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:53.840 to which were vague, and that Simon um And and 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:57.720 I wanted to I wanted to tip my hat to 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:00.720 the to the four previous movies. It was a little 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:03.840 bit of an anniversary thing. It was just shy of 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:06.760 twenty years when the movie came out. Um and I 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:09.800 also knew what I do is I take all the movies, 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:12.360 on the last movie and again on this movie. I 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:14.280 laid them all on top of each other and see 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:18.040 what haven't the film's done? What's what's something that's missing 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:22.760 from all of those movies, um and I and what 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:25.800 I wanted in Rogue Nation was a villain who was 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:30.119 a physical threat to Ethan and kind a really strong 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:34.160 woman who wasn't a member of the team. And we 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:38.960 ended up with one of those two things. Um Sean Harris, 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:42.400 who I had seen in Harry Brown. It became much 0:04:42.400 --> 0:04:44.839 more of an intellectual threat. He was more of a 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:49.520 moriarity to Ethan's Holmes uh than he was, you know, 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:54.080 a physically dangerous presence. The danger you feel around Sean 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:58.440 is what is his unpredictability as opposed to his physical mass. 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:02.880 Um And so that was it. That was the really 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:06.360 nice holdover. I was glad we didn't do that because 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:09.360 that allowed for Henry cavill in this movie, you can 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:12.200 play with it. Now, how about visually? Um, you know 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:15.800 that there is an aesthetic I think even connected all 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:17.480 the way back to Di Palma. I think it was 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:21.120 consistent in a way. But changing that up when you 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:22.599 came in, was there anything that you wanted to do? 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:25.040 Was there any were there any touchstones, like any kind 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:27.359 of reference points that you had had an idea for 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:29.520 the look of the film than for Rogue or for 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:31.240 this one for Rogue and then we'll go and then 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:34.200 this one. Yeah, when you came in, Yeah, for Rogue, 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:37.640 Tom and I watched a lot of north By, Northwest 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.960 and Notorious. We talked a lot about Hitchcock, and and 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:45.400 of course to Paluma is a is a huge disciple 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:51.080 of of Hitchcock. Um, I am less so I definitely 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:55.240 am a huge admirer of h Hitchcock's work. Uh. And 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.040 the the opera sequence, which a lot of people look 0:05:58.080 --> 0:05:59.840 at as an homage to the Man who Knew Too Much, 0:05:59.880 --> 0:06:04.720 was actually more inspired by the Key to Reservo, which 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:07.799 was which was sort of a send up of Hitchcock 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:10.760 that Martin Scorsese did, And while I wasn't trying to 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:13.320 recreate that, I used that as an example of how 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:16.719 you could take opera or in this case, a concert, 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:20.560 which because I think Tom's concerned. When I first presented 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:22.480 the idea of an opera to him, he was worried 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:26.320 that it was going to be this boring opera scene. Um, 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:27.840 and I said, no, no no, no, no no, it's going to 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:29.400 be more like this here. Look look at it, look 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:33.679 at this, Look at this little nine minute thing. Um. 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:38.760 So visually it's really interesting. I I did not think 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:42.080 in terms of locations as much as I thought in 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:47.240 terms of uh environments that invite an action. And in 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:52.720 every one of those instances in Rogue Nation, where the 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:55.560 the action scenes were dictated by something that was brought 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:58.920 to me, um and when and in the third act, 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:02.000 we we did really have the third act, and my 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.160 my team was very frustrated because they needed to know 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:07.719 what they were prepping. And I said, I don't know 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:09.640 what we're prepping because I don't have the location yet. 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:11.400 And they said, well, we can't give you a location 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:13.080 until we know what the scene is. And I said, 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:16.200 I could write the scene, and then we'll be killing 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:19.080 ourselves trying to find a location. And the real breakthrough 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:23.080 I had late in that process was the insistence that 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:29.680 we start with location. UM, My visual sense did not 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:33.520 really kick in until midway through that movie, because I 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:36.440 was so busy working on the screenplay and trying to 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:39.000 execute that, and so busy trying to figure out the 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:43.560 motorcycle chase and the underwater sequence that I really didn't 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:47.800 have the confidence to push back on my cinematographer or 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:52.360 to trust my instincts about lighting until I started editing 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:54.800 the movie over the Christmas break I had about two 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:58.600 weeks UM, and as I was putting it together, I 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:00.440 was like, well, why does certain things work for me? 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:03.040 And why does certain things not? Why do I like 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:05.600 the photography in this scene and not like the photography 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:09.600 in that scene? And what is it about my writing 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:14.960 or my style of directing that is dictating the good 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:16.920 and the bad in what I'm doing? I was? I was. 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:20.480 I spent a lot of time analyzing what had gone 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:23.240 right as well as what had gone wrong. So when 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:25.080 I came back from the Christmas break, I was much 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:32.040 more confident to to start to mandate certain things about 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:35.480 lighting and photography that I was not comfortable with before. 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:39.320 And I applied all of that too. I applied all 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:43.240 of that too, fall up from the very beginning. The 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:46.080 thing you mentioned earlier about the opera, and Tom was 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:49.240 worried that maybe it wouldn't be slower or something. I'm 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.200 curious if that's is that a consistent hurdle? Is he 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:55.440 is he like always trying to like, like thinking that 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:58.160 something might not be as amped up as he wants 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:01.040 it to be, or anything quite the eposit What Tom 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:04.439 really wants is he wants things to breathe, and he 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:07.920 wants he likes the word he uses all the time, 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:12.120 it is elegant. And you know, he loves he loves Hitchcock, 0:09:12.280 --> 0:09:17.920 he loves the classic UH Studio system style movies. And 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:21.440 we find ourselves constantly trying to do that and being 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:25.960 thwarted by an audience that's just not buying it. They 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.920 don't they don't have the patients, they don't have the 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:31.960 they don't have the conditioning to just sit there and enjoy. 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.240 You have to be constantly engaging them. And so we 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:40.280 were very pleasantly surprised with this movie that, um, the 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:43.040 only time we didn't have a problem with the test 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:46.280 audiences were those were those scenes that we thought were 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:48.480 going to be the first things to go. All the 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:51.000 character stuff and you know that the scene where Ilsa 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:55.040 is following Ethan through the through Paris, that is the 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:57.760 definition of shoe leather. That's a that's a moment that 0:09:57.800 --> 0:09:59.719 gets cut out of the movie after the first test 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:02.080 scre name and I kept waiting for people to come 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:05.160 for it, and they never did. And meanwhile we found 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:07.319 ourselves getting notes on this movie that there was too 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:10.199 much action, the car chase was too long, the helicopter 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:13.000 chase was too long, and that stuff we know how 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:16.480 to fix. We have sinse. Yeah, well what you saw 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:19.560 is definitely the pair down version of it. But you'd 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:23.200 be surprised. There's it doesn't take much. Sometimes it takes 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:27.000 us as few as as too sometimes even one shot 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:32.040 where if there there was a moment when Ethan and 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:35.760 the motorcycle drive away from us and we let them 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:38.160 get away from us before jumping back in the car. 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:40.480 And when we took that shot out, all the notes 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.440 about the car chase went away because you just tweet 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:46.160 little things. Well, it's just because the car chase kept going, 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:49.120 but you were left behind and you had to catch 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:53.280 back up with it. Uh And and it's a it's 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:57.000 a it's a classic Hitchcock technique of filmmaking, which is 0:10:57.040 --> 0:10:59.559 you grabbed the audience by the throat and you never 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.839 let go. And this movie was engineered to do that. 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:07.320 It was also engineered to start quietly and get bigger 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:09.280 and bigger and bigger as it as it went on, 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:13.000 we didn't understand how big. We really had no grasp 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:16.480 of it. Interesting. Uh, these kinds of movies often you'll 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:19.280 have like a cadre of writers on them. You know, 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:22.839 you you're the writer, director, single vision. Um, I want 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:26.520 to talk about on the page. Uh, you know, how 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:29.080 do action set pieces come to you? How do you 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:32.319 how do you find yourself writing them in ways that 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:36.320 are different than maybe you were taught to right screenplays? Uh? 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:38.920 You know, because there's such you know what I mean. Yeah, 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:41.360 we'll give you two examples. The foot Chase. I knew 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.240 what it was before I wrote it, described its story 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:47.840 boarded it, and simply did not have the time to 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:50.800 generate the pages. So I brought in a friend of 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:53.760 mine who's a screenwriter, and I said, here's all my nights. 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:57.679 Would you just please write this in script form because 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:00.280 it's it was twelve or thirteen pages, and I was 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:04.560 working on other stuff and I write very specific action. 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:06.800 I write. What I do with writing action is I 0:12:06.800 --> 0:12:08.880 write everything I want you to see in the order 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:12.360 I want you to see it. So it my action 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:16.240 sequences tend to be long in their description and incredibly 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:18.599 boring to read. There's nothing more boring than reading a 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:21.880 car chase. But you write that out because you want 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:24.120 to communicate to your crew. It's not really am meant 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:26.080 for anybody else to read. It's a it's a very 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:31.280 dry technical document. The helicopter chase was another instance where 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:36.600 this the the The script form of the helicopter chase 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:39.240 was an afterthought to figuring out what exactly is the 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:44.040 helicopter chase um and how that all came together. I'll 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:45.880 give you the very short version. Tom said, I want 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:47.760 to do a helicopter chase. I'm gonna learn how to fly, 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:52.920 figure out a sequence that I can fly in. Uh So, 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:54.680 the first thing you have to ask is, well, where 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.360 are we actually shooting this sequence? Doesn't matter where I 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:01.000 think it should be some something. The production is going 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:05.400 to dictate where I can go. And very few countries 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:08.440 were comfortable letting Tom cruise with six weeks of training, 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:12.160 come and fly aerobatics over their country, and of those 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:14.840 countries there was there were very We were looking at 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:17.360 the most photographically interesting one, what's going to have the 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:20.640 most vibrant color, what's going to be And these were 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:22.880 things I was not thinking about when I was doing 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:28.120 rog Nation Rognation. I was just trying to execute the story. Uh, 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:30.720 And we very quickly settled on New Zealand. New Zealand 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:34.800 is not a hotbed of political intrigue. It's it's a 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:37.400 far flung corner of the world and it's sent the 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:41.680 country as national parks. There's no terrorism plot that's going 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.720 to that's going to kick off in New Zealand and plausibly. 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:46.760 So we said, well, what does New Zealand look like? 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:51.000 And then that became Kashmir. So Kashmir suddenly entered into 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:52.560 the story and I had to come up with reasons 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:55.079 for why was this ending in Kashmir. Then I had 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:57.640 to decide, well, if Ethan is flying in the helicopter, 0:13:57.720 --> 0:13:59.559 what's the rest of the team doing. If this is 0:13:59.600 --> 0:14:02.400 an in sequence, I don't have to answer that. The 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:05.000 team can just you can just introduce them doing a 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:07.120 little bit of banter. If it's the climax of the movie, 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:10.920 they all have to have a vital role in stopping 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:13.000 whatever the ticking clock is. We didn't even know what 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:16.160 the ticking clock was at that point, but I knew 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:19.000 from Rogue Nation how once you add the scene, once 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:21.480 you add the team to the scene, the scene becomes 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:25.880 exponentially larger and more complex. We had tried to to 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:28.560 develop the A four hundred as a team sequence instead 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:32.080 of just a stunt, and the movie really came together 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:35.680 when I just let that go, that that is the 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:39.600 pebble that starts rolling down the hill that ultimately creates 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:42.960 an avalanche. And and so I had a helicopter chase. 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:45.280 I knew, I knew that it was taking place in 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:48.000 New Zealand. I knew that the team had to be involved. 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:52.600 I knew uh and and and and ideally they were 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:55.640 split up. So I started to have an understanding of, well, 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:59.320 whatever they're working on there, there at least in there's 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:01.960 at least two bits of parallel action going on on 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:05.160 the ground. Three is probably too many. And how is 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:07.560 the helicopter chase going to begin? And how's it going 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:10.200 to end? It's really boring to get in a helicopter 0:15:10.320 --> 0:15:12.560 throw on all the switches. So I had to figure 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:14.280 out a way to get Ethan in the helicopter, and 0:15:14.320 --> 0:15:15.480 then I had to figure out a way to get 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:18.680 him out and have a fight with the villain, because 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:21.680 this chase is going to be really boring if it 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.600 just if it just ends with the chase. So I 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:27.560 knew I was going to have spoiler alert a mid 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:32.200 air collision, and and now I'm thinking plausibly in my mind, 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.840 we'll have two helicopters collide. They're not gonna land together. 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:39.040 It's gonna be extremely it's gonna go from chaos to 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:44.320 extreme chaos. And I went to my production designer and 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:48.360 my visual effects guys um and said, what I need 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:49.760 you to do is I need you to create a 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:53.240 bathroom sink. So if I dropped two marbles in a 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:55.360 bathroom sink, no matter where I dropped them, they're going 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.360 to meet at the drain, and I want both marbles 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:02.520 to go down the drain and bill out onto this 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:07.160 cliff side somewhere and we'll have this climactic fight on 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:11.360 a on a cliff's edge. Um. And the problem is 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:14.240 that in New Zealand, there is no mountain like that. 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.160 And the problem with New Zealand is very beautiful that's 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:19.960 not a problem with New Zealand. Is the unique feature 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:22.560 of New Zealand is that there's very little in the 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:27.320 way of precipitous drops. It's mostly sloping cliffs, um or 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:29.840 and and places that did have a precipitous drop didn't 0:16:29.880 --> 0:16:33.840 have any sort of plateau. Uh. And so I put 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:38.320 that to my um my location guy. And in fact, 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:41.760 it was the only thing the entire movie that I 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:45.720 specifically asked for from my locations. Everything else was I 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:48.240 mandated to them. Go find me stuff that looks cool 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:50.880 and I'll tell you what's happening there. This was the 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:53.240 one time where I said I need this and he 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:55.800 brought me a picture of Pulpit Rock and Norway. So 0:16:56.200 --> 0:16:58.960 right then I knew my helicopter chase starting in New 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:03.360 Zealand would have a lot of transitional elements in England 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:05.840 and it would end in Norway. And in fact, that 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:09.520 helicopter impacted probably about thirty seconds of screen time. You're 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:16.240 you you travel through three countries. That's crazy movie magic, right, Yeah. Um, 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.159 you know, your your Twitter feed is a wealth of information. 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:23.359 It was a nice uh made for nice prep for today. 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:25.720 One thing you were talking about yesterday that blew my 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:28.000 mind was just the focus pulling on the halo jump, 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:33.040 which just walk people through this. I mean, first of all, 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:36.440 first of all, I want to ask, what was the 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:38.560 drive to do it this way when it's something that 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:40.760 you could probably just do in a wind tunnel or whatever. 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:46.119 Uh talk Really, I mean, we any any of the 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:48.480 stuff that you see in Mission Impossible, we could very 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:52.600 easily do on a stage somewhere. It will not give 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:56.159 you the same visceral energy that you're experiencing when you 0:17:56.240 --> 0:18:00.520 watch your start doing it. And I'm able to shoot 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:03.359 things in a way that I couldn't otherwise. Be honestly, 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:06.679 how much is that him also just wanting to have 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:10.800 that experience. Um, there's no doubt that there's a large 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:13.960 element of him having a great time doing it. But 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:17.720 for Tom, it's not about hey, look at me, it's 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:20.359 look at Ethan. It's putting it what it enables me 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:25.560 to do. And I had read somewhere today somebody uh 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:28.680 somebody sent an email to my wife who had watched 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:33.440 the film, and they completely nailed what my intention, which 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:39.960 is often very rare, um that he felt like he 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:43.480 was a spectator in those sequences. He felt like he 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:46.600 was there, which is very much why I placed the 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:49.320 camera where I do. I shoot everything in a somewhat 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.600 voyeuristic point of view, but not a voyor ap peering 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:55.080 into the room from the doorway. You're right over Henry 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:59.320 Cavill's shoulder, You're right over Tom's shoulder. Um. And so 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:01.960 Tom and I work together to create that sort of 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:05.280 immersive experience so that you're with Ethan and you feel 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:09.920 what's what's happening, You're just that much more invested. That's 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:13.399 really what we're after. UM. So when Tom said he 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:15.840 wanted to do a halo sequence, I knew right away 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:19.160 first order of business is I had to pull him 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:21.879 out as opposed to push him out, that the camera 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:24.520 had to be looking at Ethan and going backwards off 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:26.919 the back of the plane. And I knew right away 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:29.600 I needed to play bigger than the A four hundred 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:31.800 C seventeen was the only plane to do it. There 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:33.480 was a lot of it said. There were attempts to 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:36.160 discourage us from that and to use the C one thirty. 0:19:36.600 --> 0:19:39.199 I knew the C one thirty was not going to 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:42.600 be as big. It just wasn't going to be as 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:45.360 there's almost a spaceship quality to the C seventeen. It's 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:48.680 got kind of a weird interior environment that looks a 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:52.479 little bit surreal, especially when it's empty. Um and that 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:55.120 was again me pushing the visual palette in a way 0:19:55.160 --> 0:20:00.359 that I had uh So we then had to figure out, well, 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:02.360 what kind of cameras it going to be. Is going 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:06.920 to be steadicam? Is it going to be handheld? We 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:08.920 then decided that we were going to do as much 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:11.680 of the scene in the plane before Tom went out, 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:16.320 so that you you and once I decided that. Once 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:19.040 we decided that, I said, well, if we're gonna have 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:21.480 a warner inside the plane, we might as well keep 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:23.360 going and just do the whole thing as a warner. 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:27.200 And we devised it originally as five pieces that could 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:29.959 be stitched together, and we masked those stitches. The lightning 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:33.280 strike hides one of the stitches. His collision with Henry 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:36.879 hides one of those stitches. They're originally five shots, and 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:39.560 we distilled them down to three. But of course in 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:42.400 doing that, you're adding more action to each of those 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:46.560 three segments, and they become exponentially more complicated to get right. 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:51.800 Because I could get four out of the five things right, 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.439 and if number five is not right, I've got to 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:58.280 do the whole thing all over again. So we were 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:02.360 making complicated for ourselves that way to make it more complicated. 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:04.120 There was not a cameraman in the world who could 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:07.679 do what we wanted him to do. There were, there 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:12.840 were skydiving videographers, but they were not cinema camera operators 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:15.240 who could jump out of a plane with twenty pounds 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:17.320 of camera equipment strapped to the top of their head. 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:21.320 So we had to train a guy forwards and backwards. Yes, 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:25.320 everything Ginger Rogers did um. So we had to train 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:28.520 a guy in narrative storytelling. We had to train him 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:32.280 how to shoot a warner and and understanding where to 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:35.560 direct the eye. What what What these guys are used 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:37.720 to doing is image capturing. They get a watch and 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:42.520 they shoot all the action. They don't zoom in on 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:45.160 somebody and follow their island and not doing visual stories. 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:48.439 And they're not doing visual story to And that is 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:53.359 a that's a skill that I've honed over twenty years 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:56.800 and been able to communicate in a shorthand. It's it's 0:21:56.880 --> 0:21:59.360 it's something. If you watch the four firms I've directed, 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:04.119 you can see it mutate from movie one to to 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:09.040 the most recent. So reminding somebody whose job it is 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:12.000 to keep the action in the center of the frame 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:15.800 that no, Tom Cruise is not the center of the frame. 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:18.879 Tom Cruise's point of view is the center of the frame. 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:21.720 So that when Tom, when the camera's on Tom's oh, 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:24.720 you know, on his left side, and Tom looks to 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:26.600