Johnny Depp changing into The Mad Hatter

you know terribly late you know no tree in this version of Alice the Hatter was I mean in my mind he's mad I think he's been sitting there at that table having the same tea with the same people in this kind of space style funk for 10 years I think he's been frozen in time waiting for Alice to come back I had read stuff about real Hatter's when they were making the Hat the glue that they used had very high mercury content and it would stain their hands and they would go sideways you know they'd go goofy from the mercury and go nuts and so it did happen to people they went mad as a hatter it's good to be working at my trailer game the Hatter's entire body was affected by the mercury by the madness so much so that his his clothes his skin color his hair everything reflects his emotion and that's the mean that stuff's just felt right go ahead goodbye really coke demo Shanta yeah real challenge you know to define the Mad Hatter in terms of cinema in terms of fulfill its risky stuff like with any character you get these cut you know I always get these sort of images you know I get that start seeing the guy for something as wild as it was it all happened pretty organically I started making my little you know like I always do watercolors and stuff you know Tim is halfway across the globe and he's making his little drawings when we spoke about and compare them well they weren't very far off he's actually a little better than mine you know my was crude his was crew but that's the fun part you know coming up with the scary part is when you actually see it so what I did is I took that illustration and sort of translated it onto his face you know using his features the wig you know we had this electric orange yak hair that was kind of you know at its own personality we did start exploring every orange haired character and it's quite disturbing when you do that I wanted him to have electrified kind of eyes you know so we got these unbelievably green lenses and I had one of them painted just ever so slightly off you know it's kind of he's never really looking straight at you he was looking a little bit farther initially when Tim was drying not a lot of the concepts a little sketches for various characters like the Mad Hatter or the Red Queen he has a artistic style where he actually draws characters with big heads and big eyes and so what we did was ended up saying you know what let's take some footage and let's blow up Johnny Depp's eyes and see what that adds to his character and see what that looks like and so those enlarged eyes are one just subtle thing that helped bridge the gap between these fully CG characters and real people it's not a motion-capture representation when you see Johnny's performance it's him it's his eyes it's his faith it's everything he's an amazing costume with us all the bones and the bobbins I thought it would be cool if I mean we talked about him having all the tools of his trade apparent so they aren't just on a shelf but they're part of his costume into like little scissors things and he's got his thimbles which were early idea pin cushion ring and all these things we just kept pushing it and and it was great fun to make him always bits and stuff the original hat was sort of done before the drawings but it was what they both kind of saw take it to the White Queen when I first saw him in all his hair and makeup he was so unrecognizable that it was just like he was just the character from the beginning if you believe it is when he leaves the trailer when his costume goes on it's complete but he is the Mad Hatter I mean he's gone from Johnny Depp to the Mad Hatter Coco hat for Python Ashanti Billy Coe Michael track on Vandal bonkers I don't like everything when I heard him do his scene for the first time I loved everything that he had done with the very innocent very hopeful almost you know puppy dog like thing that he was doing with with one part of the Mad Hatter twinkle twinkle little bat how I wonder where your app and then I thought that I I was hearing things cuz then I was on set another day and suddenly he had fire in his eyes and was doing a Scottish accent and I assumed that he must have been rehearsing something for another movie and then I found out know when he's very much in the present he's sweet and then when he's remembering the past he's you know Scottish that just makes a little practice however just at the moment you know they might want to focus on the German war and you know it's one of those things where it's hit or miss you know I new hope that you know that it works I mean the accidents that you know the switching it's it's the merging into another character basically he's the Hatter so that you know that safety mechanism that kicks him when he needs to become tough when he needs to become angry when he needs to be protective woman he's fearful it's kind of like experiencing a kinder form of personality disorder in a way what is the Hatter with me [Music] but to cut the combination of being able to play the Mad Hatter and breathe life into that and kind of take word Lewis Carroll is done and what Tim's vision is and then throw your own stuff in there wow this is like the stuff dreams are made [Music]

Channel: Stefanie Wulf

Views: 5,124,948

Keywords: The, Mad, Hatter, Johnny, Depp, Alice, In, Wonderland, Tim, Burton, Disney, Fantasy

Id: 48CzYuYZO5Y

Length: 5min 50sec (350 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2011