Denis Villeneuve on How He Directed Arrival

I knew that had a great star in my ends so I didn't want to tear up I mean I wanted to respect that story I wanted to give it all its power [Music] it's a strange thing to take words and to go into reality and to transform it in a movie and necessarily there's like a powerful transformation process I'm trying to be as faithful as possible to the birth of the ideas of the screenwriter and I said that always to the screenwriter that I will be his best friend because I will give everything to protect his poetry and and at the same time that I will be his worst enemy because I will be a traitor I will deform sins I will I will I will cut dialogues I will make it my own I won't be a bit of a barbaric and with the material because I need to invade the screen Clara being a big sci-fi fan I thought it would be like just when I said all right let's go let's do a sci-fi movie I was like I thought it would be a lot of fun and it's not it becomes quickly a nightmare we could discover of difficult it is Garrett right to find the right idea and that to fall into cliches and I feel it's insane how much people want to do things that they've seen before is so comforting and it's tough to bring the crew out of that comfort zone it was one of the big big challenge of arrival to try to create that being in the spaceship there was no comparison I based the spaceship shape on the asteroid that is called Omiya that is going around in orbit in the solar system and the shape is insane that strange perfect shape felt ominous mysterious frightening to me we thought patrice tonight that the spaceship should be made from a matter that is not from Earth it's not a shiny spaceship it's not a white spaceship it's not made of metal or plastics made like a strange stone we are not sure what is this exactly they cannot guess I love the idea that they're still mystery there's still things that we can't explain they're strange laws don't know elements that we don't know I saw that the idea of the spaceships was was all based on the this idea that humidity for me the main quality of those aliens was that they I wanted them to have a huge strong presence like a whale but to have this feeling of being near by a huge beast underwater where you just feel a strong intelligence a strong presence that's what I was looking for for the design of the aliens I wish I had the chance to do my aliens as animatronics sadly it will have been too expensive I hate twin screens I tried to avoid it as much as possible to do as much practical effects as possible like why because I think it's ten thousand times easier for actors specifically when they have to deal with something that is linked with an imaginary and it also was much more easier for a Bradford young because yet he knew what he was getting and how to let it and and where it was coming from and there was a huge discipline to create the language I mean batteries created a dictionary and there was like I had piles of documents explaining to me the the language and that form it was the most beautiful thing to see the level of detail and passion that Patrice brought to the project was insane which I wanted the language to be almost frightening and I wanted the language to be very impressive I didn't want something that can relate to any human language something a language that is coming from another way of thinking Martin came with that strong idea of those circles abstract circles that looks almost like coffee stained I think maybe the idea came from there it's one of my favorite thing at the movie or she developed that language I feel that civilizations very have more fragile than ever I think that says things about our communications are weaker and weaker are afraid of the others we are more than ever even more we have communications the less in communication we it seems we are and that's one of the topic of the movie Patrice made a huge research to make sure that all the equipment that will be used by the military will be as accurate as possible as simple as on non spectacular and I didn't want the humans to use technology that didn't exist I wanted them to them to use what is available today the answer of that research it was like astonishingly shocking because if you talk with aliens you will use a whiteboard with a marker and say hello so it's like there's not a lot of ways to to learn language to express language - there's it at the end of the day it's like teaching to kids and the Bradford young I mean for me was a massive discovery I mean personally as a filmmaker to work with a man I thought I was seeing the birth of the genius the guy is really hyper sensible we'd create an approach for the movie that we called dirty sci-fi which means that we were trying to create the feeling that this was happening and a bad Tuesday morning like when you're a kid in a school bus and a rainy day going to school and you dream looking at the clouds you know and and going away from the scope of the huge movies you know going away from the flares from their SPECT we weren't trying to make something delicate in the light he brought a lot of humanity and beauty to a movie very often and my projects are inspired by a painter or by a specific photographer for this one it was very inspired by personal references that we were sharing together Bradford and I because the movies in like I would send two parts there's like Louie's relationship with her daughter that is the heart of the movie and there's all the sci-fi of the movie and and ended that Sandra that will to either embrace when sets with sensibility and delicacy that little relationship between the mother and the child and the way I wanted to approach it and as I'm trying to bring a lot of freshness to sci-fi I was also very excited by the idea of working with someone that I had never had done sci-fi before and that will approach the movie not like a sci-fi movie but more like intimate drama about a woman was dealing with the death of her daughter the thing that for sure got stronger inside means my love for actors and and oh I'm inspired by them I love more and more collaboration and more and more to establish strong relationships with them that I really love yeah I like strong collaborators I always see this like a like a tennis game you know if I threw the ball art I will love the ball to come back as fast or faster I like to turn myself by people that are stronger than me the only thing that drives me impatient is when I feel that someone brings nothing I like I like when people are like a strong opinions and are ready to fight for it and I love that when you have the chance to work with someone I think that on each movie this person will be this actor or actresses will be my muse and I will need to follow that news and each movie has a different one and and when you discovered it's like that's a most beautiful thing because you you will have a partner to go in the dark you know that I love Amy was like the most engaged and and generous artist I've ever worked with she was trusting me hundred-percent no he go at all I never met and and willing to do anything I mean a very impressive artist yeah he is so wonderfully compassionate to actors on set which is so not always the case he created this very calm environment in which to allow us to have these silent moments full of breath and full of awe and full of wonder and full of confusion and conflict and his direction never felt like condescending in any way also I loved that Deniz family was there because this film for me that was sort of the core is his family and he had his family on set and I brought my daughter on set which I usually don't do but the set was so calm and so friendly and so familiar that I felt like it was a place that was very well it felt very welcoming we we sat down and talked about it before to sort of talk about sort of the journey she's gonna take and for me what what it would started happening and how I knew I was in character and this is this is sort of how I spent the shoot was any time I felt nauseous I knew I was there because he's like I want her to feel off balance I wanted to feel seasick I want her like something's happening and she doesn't know what it is and yet I can't we can't play the card you know so it's it's a very delicate balance of playing somebody who we believe has had this moment of grief that she shares with the audience so I have to bring sort of this depth to the character because she was able to act in all those layers and the same time to make sure that as it would be emotionally logic from from one viewing to the other it's what we talked about so it was really we made sure in each shot we were making that where was she and this idea of changing her perspective about that what was something that was like at the art of this project for me Whitney the first meeting I had with him there was this intense connection on our over the character he felt very passionate about making her just every woman in a way you know and very much at the end of the day he would always say this this is this is a woman's story like no matter what what other story were telling the core of this has - from beginning to end it has to be this story and that helped ground me like when we were doing all the stuff with the aliens and and all of this it doesn't you know people like do you you like it all this stuff like did you research what if I was like no because she's never been in a room with aliens like she's never been in a suit like this this is all new and so just going along and being open to the experience was the keys the things that was very important for me was to make sure that the behaviors of my characters would make sense for a linguist you know that the way she approached the aliens at the beginning of the movie I wanted to make sure that that words was relevant and an authentic from me the movie is not necessarily about language but about the limits of language that the idea that after when you beyond the words the only thing that you can rely on is intuition if you meet someone that doesn't speak the speak the same language as you do very often there's a strange communication that we can establish just by following your intuition and I feel that's a strength that we are not not using enough in today's everything you see is is Denise vision he allows for these large sort of set pieces if you will to exist but at the end of the day he's more interested in the intimate story behind all of it it's a way to to interact with other human beings as a width of living it's a huge privilege I don't take things for granted so I'm always saying thank you to the gods of cinema every time it when is going well you know it's like arrival could have been a total disaster we were flirting with disaster a lot doing that movie so I was really afraid as we were doing it that I go wrong you know it's a movie that was fried jack fragile until the end why because two of the main characters were digitally no we're not there for real there was like a fair amount of VFX it was like a complex story that was like mixing strange intimacy with the scope of alien invasion movie there was like I was open that we will keep the tension alive and also but more important that the that it will convey the emotion that I felt when I was reading the short story and I fought to protect that to protect those emotions through the process so it was a big relief for me to see that the audience is embracing the movie for what we we dream it will be you [Music]

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Keywords: denis villeneuve, denis villeneuve arrival, denis villeneuve interview, arrival, amy adams, jeremy renner, the directors cut, video essay, directing, how to direct a movie, prisoners, sicario, blade runner, arrival movie, arrival ending, arrival video essay, film analysis, amy adams interview, dune, science fiction movies, sci fi, denis villeneuve movies, denis villeneuve dune, blade runner 2049

Id: CZ6HhFO-h-g

Length: 12min 24sec (744 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 24 2019