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You are here: Home / Archives for Maleficent interview

Maleficent Interview: The Creative Robert Stromberg

May 29, 2014 by Momstart Leave a Comment

Being an artist at heart I really am interested in how you make a movie like Maleficent so amazingly beautiful in addition to taking care of everything else that goes on around it. Which is why I enjoy talking to creative people like Robert Stromberg. Robert Stromberg has worked on so many amazing films like The Hunger Games, Pirates Caribbean: At World’s End, Oz the Great and Powerful, Alice and Wonderland just to name a few. Robert is also the director of Maleficent.

Maleficent director

I knew he’s done a lot of design work and visual effects so I really wanted to know what his creative process is. The world he created in Maleficent is amazing and it’s like there are two worlds. There is the Kingdom and then there is the magical world full of elaborate and amazing creatures. I asked:

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Q:  What was the creative process that you used creating the Moors and all the characters of that world?

Robert:  Over the years I probably have a file full of just sketches and strange creatures and stuff that you wanna use one day.  I always approach a movie with using the world itself as a psychological steering device.  So, in other words, just for instance, at the beginning of this film we start off and it’s sort of happy and sunny and everything else.  And the mood of the whole world goes dark with Maleficent and then comes back up again at the end.  So I think it’s really interesting, not just as a designer but to, to create fun things, there’s no rule book there.  That’s what’s fun about it is you just do a sketch and oh, this is cool, and you know, three months later it becomes something real.

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The interesting thing I’ve learned over the projects that I’ve done is how you can steer the audience and make the audience feel something, even if they’re not aware that that’s how things are done.  So that was where I started.

Which lead into the question from another blogger about what was the most difficult thing to bring to the big screen for this film?

Robert:  It’s just getting through the film and still carrying a big, beating heart under your arm as you make it through this jungle is something.  Someone once told me directing is like painting in a hurricane.  And and it’s true.  You know, the whole… I can’t pick one thing that was challenging because just making a movie at this scale, you’re juggling.  You’re just constantly juggling chainsaws and trying to draw pretty pictures at the same time.  So I think the challenge is to bring all these huge, you know, elements together and at the end of all that, have something with a heart and soul and emotion and something that means something.  I’m always amazed at how movies get made at all, you know?  There’s so many pieces that have to come together that it’s really fascinating process.  I’m still fascinated even though I’ve been doing this for twenty-eight years, I’m still as, as fascinated today as I was when I was five years old.

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You may not know this but this was his first time to be a director. So one of the bloggers asked, So this being your first directorial debut, what was different from being on set compared to being in the art department?

Robert:  I’ve always wanted to be a director.  You know, I used to make movies when I was a little kid.  I was a huge Disney fan.  I had an art teacher who was an ex-Disney artist.  I used to draw like crazy, images, including Maleficent when I was five, six years old.  And I had always wanted to tell stories and be a director. I got sidetracked by this pesky art direction stuff.  It was part of the journey.  I’m glad that I did all that stuff because it prepared me not only being around these big movies but also meeting a lot of great directors.  I met Peter Weir and we became close friends and (worked together) on a movie called Master and Commander.  image

He taught me a lot about how to talk to actors and to get at an emotional level with them.  And then I spent four years with Jim Cameron and that was useful in how to be strong when you need to be.  I worked with Tim Burton.  So these are all directors but they do it in different ways.  So I came into this with a lot of experience and not only that, you have to have emotion yourself.  And you have to have spent your life studying human behavior and really, really paying attention to why people react a certain way when they’re told something.  I think it’s all those little bits of information plus all of the knowledge I got from just my experience with other directors.  And then the confidence to be at the same level with somebody in finding the emotion of that character.  That’s what made me feel comfortable in being a director.

As the director he has so much of the movie to oversea, casting decisions are run by him and of course everyone wants to know how Angelina Jolie became a part of Maleficent. She did play the part so very well.

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Q:  Was Angelina your first choice for the role of Maleficent?

Robert:  She was actually already attached when Disney hired me.  They were looking for a director but she had wanted to do this character for a long time.  So, lucky for me she was (attached to the role).  I didn’t have to do much digging on that part.  It was sort of this perfectly made iconic combination that I was blessed to have.  You have this sort of thing that looks really good in the costume, this iconic figure, that wasn’t it.  What really surprised me, which was great, was the emotional depth and the richness of the emotional part of that character was, when you combine that with the image, is what made it powerful.

Q:  Had you worked with Angelina Jolie before and if not, what was it like to work with her and direct her?

Robert:  I hadn’t.  I went to her house the first day I met her and what was really great is we didn’t talk about the movie for the first hour, I think.  I’ll never forget we just sat on some back steps in her backyard and watched her kids play out in the backyard.  And we talked about life and, and being a parent and just normal stuff.  And I think that’s why we connected is because we had to find out that we were both human beings first before we tackled human being problems.  And that was a special moment for me because I wasn’t necessarily intimidated by her, but I had never seen the human, motherly quality in there before.

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Q:  You said you had to stay true to the original Sleeping Beauty but did you still have creative license in what you got to do?

Robert:  Well Linda Woolverton wrote the script.  I think we would deviate from that based on — a lot of times when you’re in the moment, it looks better on paper than it does when you’re actually seeing how two characters are reacting to each other, or how a scene plays out.  That’s also part of what you learn as a director is how to adapt in a situation and understand that something is just not right and to adjust it so that it is.  I’ve always told people that whether I’m doing a painting, which is a composition, compositional rhythm, or music is its own rhythm, a dialog can be a rhythm too.  And if it’s off, if one inflection is off slightly off, you have to recognize that because it makes a huge difference emotionally, in how you’re supposed to feel watching it.

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Q:  What was your favorite scene to direct?

Robert:  I think there are many, many different special moments.  But I suppose the christening scene ’cause in the film we’re doing a retelling.  So we’re not just doing a straight out of the box remake of that classic version.  So it was very intentional that when you watch the movie you’ve learned a whole bunch of new material.  When you get to that center point of the movie we shot that scene almost verbatim, word for word from the classic cartoon version.

Maleficent is in theaters May 30th.

Filed Under: Movie review Tagged With: interview, Maleficent, Maleficent interview, movie, Robert Stromberg

Maleficent Interview: Sharlto Copley, Practical Jokes and Mad Kings To Good Dads

May 28, 2014 by Momstart 1 Comment

Sharlto Copley, to me that’s a name I haven’t heard before even though he was in District 9. He plays King Stefan in Maleficent an origin story in a way for Disney’s most evil character. In Maleficent we also learn a lot more about Stefan and how he became King and where he was before then. So he grows very close to Maleficent which might be a bit of a spoiler for you because in Sleeping Beauty you know nothing about how the two had met before Maleficent bestows the curse on his baby girl. And it’s through this relationship our story begins.

Sharlto Copley Maleficent Interview

In the interview with Sharlto we learn much more about him and how he got along with Angelina Jolie whom he shared some screen time with. He was quite genuine and honest about the practical jokes that he and Angelina Jolie played on each other. He even said that he was starting to go crazy on set worrying about when another raven was going to show up and scare him. SO he wasn’t completely acting crazy on the big screen. image

most of it was pretty crazy and will remain with me. There was one sort of example of the kind of thing we were doing. I was pretending….in the beginning scenes….. um….sitting down by the river and whatever, I sometimes would improvise my dialog in the form as I have been known to do.

So I pretended that I’d heard a noise in the bush. Now while the cameras filming ’cause this particular prank was trying to get something with her that was sort of for the record on camera. So trying to prank her on camera. So I heard a noise, you know, I suddenly said to her, "Do you hear something?" She sort of looked at me but now she’s got to keep playing on. She’s like, "Oh, what’s he doing," you know, but she’s got to keep on. And so I run off and I go behind the bush and I’m like, and I’m diving down and I’m like finding things.

And I come up with the raven ….. As if the raven had been following her, you know, and I’m trying to get her….. "I got him!" And the whole crew laughed and I thought I was very clever and very funny. And then, um, …. we wrapped that night, we finished shooting at nine thirty in the evening. And the next morning, I get to my trailer I think six o’clock or something like that. And I open my trailer, I’m all tired and I just like can’t wait to just get into the trailer and there’s these two huge real ravens in my trailer.

And they literally looked at me …. kind of went [SCREECH] I was literally too scared to go into my trailer. It took half an hour before the guy could come and remove them — ravens are intimidating birds!

Even with the pranking he really did enjoy his role and looked forward to getting it.

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I did really want this because I’d  met Angie before and really felt she was very complimentary about District 9. She’d seen my performance in there and she said how we should work together some time. That was about two years before. And so when this came around I was really looking for a fantasy film. I was looking for something that was, you know, that I could show my seven year old nephew, you know? ‘Cause most of my films are R-rated movies. I was like, come on man. Gotta do something with some sort of positive message.

And so, um, yeah. I went after this quite aggressively. I shot a tape for it, a bunch of scenes, and I actually was saying to my agents, I was like, "Guys, get my tape to Angie." And they’re like, "Oh, we can’t. She’s on a boat. We don’t know where she is." I’m like, "Just get it to her," like, I know she did say she was interested to work with me, so, um, I was very grateful to get this, yeah.

Then he was asked how he prepared for his role of being such a powerful King.

Um, you know, I can’t go through my experience because I do characters. I really just feel like I….. it is a little crazy I suppose. I do feel like I become somebody else and, and in the rare occasions where I’ll be doing a take where that slips, you know, and I suddenly feel like myself again and I’ll actually stop and go like, "Okay guys, hang on." You know, and go again. Um, so I don’t, when I’m preparing is really just understanding what the, what the, the deepest truth that I can find in humanity or in human archetypes within, within human behavior.

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Once I know what that is, so for example, I can relate to ambitious men. I’m an ambitious person in my life. And it’s like, okay, so I know what that is. You know, I have certain alpha male type tendencies. I’m quite a dominant guy. …….so if I take that and just do that in its extreme form. If you just, if it’s possible that that was completely unchecked, where would that….. where would that lead to? And so that’s really my preparation I suppose.

And once I, once I know, once I’ve made that decision, then I just let it come out and see what’s, what happens, you know? And it’s not like every day I’m preparing in some way, or I don’t, I don’t, like, you know, practice my lines first in my trailer or things that some actors find useful. I don’t do that.

Even without seeing the movie, if you know the story of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty then you know that after Stefan’s daughter is cursed he sends her away to live with the three fairies in the forest not to return until after her 16th birthday. So they live without knowing each other and Sharlto says that there is a lesson for father’s in Maleficent.

Spend time with your children so you don’t end up like Stefan. I have people say, "What’s the message for my child?" I was like, "Well, the message is for you, dude. It’s, like, don’t fall off your castle." It’s like,  "Well I was making money for my family." It’s like, they didn’t want money. They wanted time with daddy. You know? And you see it all over the place. And you see it — I’m, you know, I’ve lived with them. I don’t have kids yet because I was aware that I was that I was working so hard.

If I want to have kids, I want to be able to spend some time with them every day.

 

Maleficent is in theaters Friday May 30th.

Filed Under: Movie review Tagged With: Disney, interview, King Stefan, Maleficent, Maleficent interview, movie, review, Sharlto Copley, Sleeping Beauty, Stefan

What’s It Like Being A Disney Princess: Maleficent Interview with Elle Fanning #MaleficentEvent

May 27, 2014 by Momstart 6 Comments

Last week while being in LA I saw Maleficent and interviewed the cast. Maleficent is the untold story of Disney’s scariest villain and it ends up being an amazing story told by the amazing cast, Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sharlto Copley and Sam Riley. It was so good. Elle Fanning plays Aura and we had time to sit down with her and interview her. I was lucky enough that this was my second encounter with the beautiful young lady. She was at Disney Social Media Moms on her 16th birthday.

auroa

To me, Elle is the perfect actress to play a princess, especially the princes Aurora. She is bright and bubbly and inquisitive. She is quite intelligent and just a pure beauty. IMG_1795

Q : What’s it like taking on the role of a Disney princess?

EF : It was my dream. Like, my, whenever, when anyone asks you like what I wanted to be when I grew up when I was little, I would say, "A Disney princess," ’cause that’s the ultimate goal in life, I think  for any young, girl. And especially Sleeping Beauty. She was always my favorite one ’cause I felt like I looked — you know, when you’re little you see which ones you look like the most and she was the one that I looked like the most. So I would go to Disney store and I would buy her clothes and her shoes and, um, so to get to play this is, it’s really, like, the dream.

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Q : Did you feel any pressure living up to Sleepy Beauty’s standards?

EF : Yeah,  ’cause, I mean, obviously I watched the animated movie so many times and it’s like you wanna do it justice because I feel like that Sleeping Beauty — they’ve already done it so perfectly, you know. I ha- I mean, I have to live up to that. So I did watch the animated film right before I started filming just because I thought it was in, she has a certain physicality ’cause she’s drawn, you know, drawn a certain way. And, and she holds her hands in this, you know, with these little gestures and her posture and her feet.

So I tried to bring that charm to the role. But also there is, in ours there is a little more to her ’cause she’s not just a delicate princess, you know. She, she has some strength and she actually shows real emotion. She gets sad and feels betrayal and, ’cause a lot of secrets are hidden from her. So, it was nice in ours that we could make her more human than just, you know, just the cartoon.

Q : I felt like she was so very innocent to the point of being naïve. How different is the character from Elle?

EF : Right. Well she is that way ’cause she’s been trapped, you know, she’s in this little cottage, you know. She doesn’t know outside the world. ….raised by fairies. And definitely very naïve in that way, so. Everything she’s learned she’s kind of had to learn on her own and I guess for me, I’m still as happy and as curious as she is, so I like to soak up a lot of information, so we’re very similar in that way. But I guess, it is exaggerated as a fairy tale. So her naïve-ness is to the point of so much. Whereas I don’t think any child can be that sheltered like she was in our time. So I guess I’m different in that way from her.

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Q : I think you made her very believable and you kept us very attached to her.

EF : Thank you. I, I tried to do that ’cause I know, it could get boring if it’s oh, that girl is just the one who’s happy and doesn’t know anything, you know? I thought that to bring a sense to her that she’s always kind of desperate to learn and she’s trying to figure things out, that’d be nice. And to show that she hasn’t been taught to be scared yet. She doesn’t know that she’s to be scared of things that look different.

When she does see Maleficent, she’s not scared of her, which is very strange for Maleficent ’cause normally everyone’s so terrified of me, but this little girl’s not. Which, um, I think at that what, that’s what makes them have this bond that they do.

Q : What was your favorite scene to shoot?

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EF : To shoot? Mine was when I pricked my finger on the spindle ’cause it’s such an iconic — I mean, when I think about the original, that’s the scene I think of. So to film that scene, it was the very last day of filming that we did. Everything was building its way up to that monumental moment and I felt — I, I, I wanted to do it right, you know, everything has to be a certain way. ‘Cause that scene impacted me a lot when I was little.

It scared me more than Maleficent did because of the way the lights were and it looked like Aurora was morphing into Maleficent, like, with that green and purple light. So I was like, "We have to have those lights." So they changed them they, made it more of a green hue and then I had the trance and, um, so I think it turned out, what I saw it turned out good, right? It could’ve changed since then.

Q : Can you tell us about your audition process and where you were when you found out you got the part?

EF : Yeah, it’s funny ’cause it all happened really fast. Um, a lot faster than it, than those things normally do. I heard there was gonna be a Maleficent movie which you know, it’s it’s from the villains point of view. There has to be an Aurora in there. So I was like, oh my gosh, I hope I get to be that. And they asked me to come in, the director Rob, for a meeting. So I met with Rob and Linda, and Linda was the writer. She wrote Beauty and the Beast, so I was excited to meet who wrote Beauty and the Beast too.

So I went and had a meeting with them and we, we just talked and they, I think they just wanted to get a sense of me, kind of what I was like. And, um, and they didn’t describe much of the story ’cause they kind of already decided that they were gonna give me the part. They told me in there that I got it. And I, then they handed over the script. Handing over the script was like the coronation of everything. And, um, yeah, I was, I, I read the script in the car and, like, kind of got, like, you know, like, motion sickness, like, reading it while driving home. But I was like, I did not stop. I just kept going. I was so excited.

Q : Was it hard for you, without being able to see everything that was going on because of the special effects, to get where you needed to be in that moment?

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EF : I know! It was a lot, it was more than I’d ever done before. You’re on a set so there is a stage and things are built on it, but everything basically surrounding you, all the little fairies, I mean, those are just tennis balls or little lights. And there’s like green and blue screens that you’re basically standing in, so you really have to imagine everything. It also can get a little technical too, but then you don’t want your performance to be prohibited by the technicality of it.

You want to make sure that you’re, you know, still playing your character but, you still have to be aware of the little, you know, the hand that you’re holding, but you’re not holding a hand, it’s air. So you have to make sure how would I hold it if it was there? We also had to do all this scanning of your so what we would do, like, whenever you had a hair change or a wardrobe change, you stand on this turntable and stand completely still and they turn you inch by inch and scan your body.

Then that makes, like, a virtual you into a computer and then they can take that virtual you and put you onscreen. So when I did all the floating and stuff, a lot of that was, they manipulated, you know, I don’t know how it works but they did it.

Q : Do you feel bummed out that you got a princess role with no singing?

EF : I know! I was thinking about that! I was like, I’m surely gonna get to sing the song, you know? I think that it just, for this one it just didn’t happen. Lana Del Rey, she sings that song in our trailer, and it’s so perfect I can’t think of — I mean it’s, ’cause our, our movie’s more gothic, you know? So it’s nice to have her haunting voice, you know, a different take on it than just the original one.

See Maleficent in Theaters on Friday May 30th.

Filed Under: Movie review Tagged With: Disney Princess, Elle Fanning, Maleficent, Maleficent interview, movie

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