MISS POTTER (2006) | Behind the Scenes

i'm using jackets with brass buttons however do you imagine such things when you read about beatrix potter's life it's impossible to believe that it's not fiction mr norman ward which other books have you supervised personally yes this will be my first ah it's like a simple tale of an incredible woman norman allowed us a peek at peter rabbit miss potter we found it utterly charming it's about a woman who's ahead of her time you know she's really a pioneering [Music] spirit this is a film about a modern woman plunked into the middle of victorian england and how does she cope with this what's expected of her is that she will marry a suitor of her parents choosing that she will settle down and become a sort of obedient wife and the mistress of a household it's about a lot of things it's i mean it's about life so it's sort of deal you know touches on a lot of things come over here ask jemima puddle duck it's the first drawing evidence of jemima this film gets into her psyche stop what just some silliness it's a really enchanting story there's something and it's told to do with renee how she plays her she's she does such a beautiful job your brother has asked me to marry him and i feel quite irrationally that i may say yes the cast of this film is a dreamcast for me renee is very disciplined as an actor she completely tries to inhabit the characters she's not renee zellweger playing beatrix potter she's beatrix potter when i first read the script two years ago i felt this character i recognized her i knew exactly who she was and why she needed these characters to express what she wasn't able to say in her life on a daily basis you don't have any friends yes i do mother every time i draw during the whole shoot she spoke in beatrix's accent the point of the scene is to establish that she and her mother have no relationship her accent is absolutely flawless but the difference between americans and brits isn't just that of an accent there is there's a lot of difference and she she becomes a british person you know i thought it was a wonderful wonderful opportunity to look at her perspective how she might see the world because you have to assume that it's very different from how the rest of us must experience things renee went through some training in art with our chief animator alison hamilton showing how to wield a brush so i think you know renee is sort of half an artist now i wonder if she'll produce anything but she's been doggedly pursuing perfection and if there's anything that i know in hollywood is it's the people that are really passionate about something and try to do it perfectly that's really what makes good miss movies mr warren i was beginning to fear you wouldn't come when i first started speaking to renee renee said you know how i want to cast for norman ewan mcgregor and it was just synchronicity their chemistry together on screen is astonishing quite quite extraordinary he's like a real old-fashioned movie star in this film he's terribly dashing and romantic and ever so slightly a little bit of a twit you know which makes it even more endearing you and rabbits extraordinary there is this sense of humor that follows through that whole relationship which is just magical to watch yes i think he has a very rare quality and ability to emote in a very honest way that's subtle and not manipulative goodbye miss parker i was just so excited to see him play norman for that reason and to get to go to work with him goodbye in this very emotional and beautiful story it's a real actors film there's a really nice sense that we're creating the scenes together in in a very satisfying way for the actors what i love about my cast is they just moved me to cheers and absolutely insisted that norman bring you around for tea i have decided that you and i are going to be friends millie warns a real person she is the publisher's sister um she's kind of conceived as an early feminist i suppose men are bored they're useful for only two things in life financial support and procreation bittrex has an independent inner creative life which really delivers her from that situation from that confined prescribed life that women had at that time i'm so glad that norman found you beatrix i was missing something i didn't even know i've always wanted to work with emily because she's one of our finest actresses and um have such a great time with her why can't you talk about the weather like other girls well all the other unmarried daughters in our circle and believe me there are many they sit around all day gossiping and unaccountably bursting into tears but you have done something you've written a book i warn you i am prepared to like you very much the three of those together renee you and with emily i find just astonishingly wonderful [Music] this is totally magic you're going to be able to touch the magic in this because when they you know it's just going to be lovely and who better to do that than chris noonan i knew when i read the screenplay that the tone of what he would do would be just right he has a childlike curiosity that's ever present he's looking around and wondering wondering what next so he's discovering something as it goes along he's very likable man chris noonan has a very deft touch at balancing imagination and drama and whimsy we're very lucky and it's exactly what we needed for this film you know some of your paintings are quite pretty beatrix but i'm not going to deceive you as your father doesn't call them great art and cat can i not be faithful it seemed like a perfect partnership you know the lady who who created these beautiful stories that resonate with children and and chris and his curiosity and his his gentle manner and how he handled the telling of the story it just it seemed right she wants to make contact with her daughter he has a very subtle touch and he's able to place sentiment without it being overly sentimental i think with the animation the animation is just right there's a little bit of it where you see the characters move but not too much it really feels to me like if beatrix potter had been an animator that's what she would have come up with you know it's absolutely spot-on that looks nice you are i'm only i'm only enjoying it i think the fun that we had on set manages to communicate itself through the film and i think you sort of get a sense of you know you smile a lot through the film as well [Music] one of the things i said to chris wright at the beginning was that i would like the film to have a kind of documentary quality rather than for it to look as their designer had been anywhere near it and so i said i would like to attempt to do the whole thing out of stock rather than making all the clothes which is in fact what we've done the way that you do that you have to have a vision in your head of how that person should look and the progression of how they looked when they were young how they looked when they were older and what you would like to see them in and then you go and try and find it and i was able to do that was able to find things that were exactly what i would have designed anthony powell is is a slave to detail he completely he absolutely immerses himself every every day the detail he always comes in to place the jewelry he always comes into to to see if everything's exactly right the amount of thought is staggering miss potter mr warne i was beginning to fear you wouldn't come yourself it wasn't raining when i left the office i never land when i see a script exterior rain and it's shooting in march in england don't do the film it's gonna be too cold it's gonna be miserable i said to anthony do you think i said to him because i've done this before in a film where you put glycerine on the clothes and it makes them look really wet but you don't have to beware and the scene was actually played underneath a balustrade or what if it's called a roof of some sort he wasn't having any of it no i said no he actually just laughed at me i went i've done this thing with glycerine and the costume looks wet but i don't have to be no no no no it said in the script you know that he he came and he was absolutely soaked to the skin and so so to the skin he was going to be so then cut to me being sprayed and splashed down with water and spritzed in the face and it's like minus three degrees in fact on the final day of shoot there i woke up and i'm snoring and i thought great nice i mean obviously you don't want people to be uncomfortable or die of pneumonia so what we did was we had an unbelievably thin wetsuit made for him so hopefully it helped to keep him warm so he's not dead yet anyhow so hopefully it had no ill effects this was a project that had to be shot in england and had to be uh shot either in scotland or lake district really and bear chicks brought a vacation in both places but we we just sort of focused on the lake district as as being the place that we would feature the lake district was so much part of her life from when she was the smallest child the family used to take their holidays in the lake district and it was the place that she chose as her home you know from middle age onwards it was obviously something that was extremely important to her not a bad outlook miss potter it's sublime certainly the lake district is pretty unique and has to be very much part of beatrix and um if she's buying up farms in the lake district it's very hard to kind of replicate them somewhere else the real hilltop is a very well-known place and um tourists come from all over the globe to see it not only is it full of tourists who who would be hard to control in addition to all of that there are only about two angles where you get a decent frame and we certainly couldn't have built a garden in front of it we couldn't have there are a lot of things we couldn't have done um and we stumbled upon this place and did a heck of a lot to it in order to make it look like hilltop it always makes it easier to feel a person's experience when you're surrounded what with um the things that you know were beloved to them and martin is just so meticulous and and everything has been thought through everything and if you can't have uh the thing itself then something that's representative of it will be in the space one of the most interesting aspects is i'm working in a period i've never worked in before i suppose a lot of films have been set in what anthony and and mark my art director happily call olden times and and it's really nice to do it at a different kind of olden times one where you can have a car driving through and where you can use a little bit more of um of what's there in the landscape and what's there on the location this is just beatrix potter's world come to life just the fact that it has been preserved to such a great degree there's no mcdonald's no nasty signs it's also it's also quaint actually but it does feel like a place of that time that when she was alive it felt comfortable it felt right it felt safe you know to to be that beatrix that it was sort of her retreat where she can be herself where she is surrounded by the things that she loves and and finds safety in the creativity that comes from being in that space beatrix spotter has existed in every child's life in every country of the world i mean she she is just there and and a part of a part of growing up now there's a starling as i heard that young master peter had a narrow escape from mr mcgregor's garden so many people have been you know it's probably the first stories they were ever read by their parents they have been translated into nearly 40 foreign languages and she supervised the first translations into french and german and dutch herself although she didn't speak the languages that didn't destroy her confidence in supervising the translations and they're known all over the world when you read about beatrix potter's life it's impossible to believe that it's not fiction and i became excited that people would come to know the real woman lots of things about her life i found completely astonishing you often find gems in the reality that are just better than anything you could possibly invent i think people will be interested in in who she was and uh and the sort of trials and tribulations and so on she went through to do what she did peter you naughty boy look what an example you're setting [Music] that's better any more of that and i'll paint you out when people close [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] you

Channel: MovieBestBits

Views: 9,033

Keywords: miss potter, miss potter 2006, miss potter behind the scenes, MISS POTTER (2006) | Behind the Scenes, Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Emily Watson, behind the scenes, beatrix potter, miss potter ending, miss potter kiss, beatrix potter peter rabbit, peter rabbit, making of miss potter 2006, making of miss potter 2006 movie, miss potter 2006 movie bonus extras, miss potter 2006 movie bonus material, miss potter 2006 movie extras, moviebestbits, beatrix potter movie

Id: 2e2ff-OsQlM

Length: 22min 0sec (1320 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021