Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet, Laura Dern & Greta Gerwig Break Down a Scene from 'Little Women'

hi I'm Saoirse Ronan and I play Joe March hi I'm Timothy and I play Laurie hey I'm Laura and I play Marmee and I'm Gretta and I wrote the screenplay and I directed this movie and this is notes on the scene sit down Laurie Latin is a privilege please you have to learn this I can't afford to lose this position just returning to the Cicero's girl out there no there is no us mr. Brooke there's a girl no there is not oh there is a girl that's a girl so this is in Theodore Laurence Laurie Lawrence's house with his tutor John Brooke and Jimmy came up with this idea that he would be standing on a chair and it was a good idea it was funny we wanted the Lawrence has to be very like grand and masculine and not cozy but it was actually an interesting thing because the way that we structure the movie we start in adulthood and that's one timeline and childhood is another timeline I wanted the childhood to have this golden glow so we shot with a very specific filter and it kind of worked against the coldness of the Lawrence house because it still had the golden glow of childhood but so we wanted to do was give it scale and density that would kind of impart that same coldness without actually having cold color because we wanted to save that for the adult section hello Amy I'm Laurie I know you brought my sister back after the dance I would have never have sprained my ankle I have lovely small feet the best in the family me Amy is fleeing because sure she's been hit by her teacher and she knows she's gonna be in trouble so she's running over to this house because she doesn't want to go home and she's very sad I was there when you shot that saying I am and she did it like 20 times like one after the other it was amazing and every single time it was hilarious and she just like made it bigger and bigger every single time yeah I like I like in actors in general and Florence in particular I like actors who can go who can go almost too big yeah I find it really fun because I find then I always I want this thing either right before or right after the one that's pushed too far but you kind of have to fling that way to get the thing that's interesting [Music] tell the servants I want this painting purchase for me immediately Laurence you want to be the happiest boy in the world fellow can't live on books alone I could what did you do that thing I did nothing I did a drawing and the mr. Davis hit me this is one of those scenes where I have almost everyone in the room at once and here they all start to enter and this is sounds like really boring to say because like obviously I'm very proud of how this scene was blocked rock scenes with this many people and figure out all of the ways that they're moving and I could only do because they memorize their lines so precisely that it was like it was one of those scenes that was like a hot potato handoff we rehearsed all of these like over lapping sands a lot in rehearsals but then also with this one in particular I remember it was a new location for all of us we were used to being in the March house which was smaller and we couldn't knew our way around it so this was our first time shooting on this location all of us together I think that familiarity with the setting or unfamiliarity with the setting was important because we knew that March house so well by the by the second week of shooting her before and that one it felt as austere or maybe that's not the right word but as you know everything great I was communicating before felt properly anonymous just difficult it was my grandfather are you scared of him no I'm not scared of anyone he looks Stern but my grandfather was much more handsome Joe we do not compare grandfathers Laura enters just there and has her lunch just there and it was this timing and getting everyone to kind of be exactly where we needed them to be and I remember this was my partner Noah Noah Baumbach always hit this was his favorite line Joe we do not come it was like for him Italy killed him he's on the cat news like it's hilarious you think he's more handsome eh oh no actually you are very handsome I knew your mother's father you've got his spirit oh well thank you sir I'm saying this as an outsider it was not part of ladybird how no wonder she brought these two actors together because watching the two of you on-screen together or watching you both act it's like you're you just hurl every cell how I mean it's just so do you I like people leave it all on the floor yeah beautiful you are not to attend that school anymore good that man has always been an idiot Joe will teach you me I already teach bet you're a good teacher yes women being taught at home is much more proper I believe only because the schools for women are so poor Andy's quite right I wish all the girls would leave his horrible school and that he would die maybe you did wrong and there will be consequences I didn't I didn't even do anything I just did a drawing thank you so much for taking care of art of course don't like girls have a way of getting into mischief so do i well then you'll run over and we'll take care of you please and come over whenever you'd like invite your sister Beth as well we blocked it and rehearsed it's sort of like a dance for I would say like an hour on and off and then we went away they set off the whole thing and then we came in and I'm shot for the whole day well what's particularly amazing as we're watching here is as she's defining the movement this dance for this part of the film every single moment every move comes with a new dynamic of a different so like for example here Timmy and I are establishing this maternal nature that yeah who sent it to him then he doesn't have in his life you have John Burke and Meg sort of first flirtation yes you and the girls are dealing with Amy's sort of fetch you with yes and her stuff yeah their dynamic Chris who's sort of a lovely sort of paternal figure and a way to all of us and even me as some yes yes the man who's left the home but he's this yeah neighbor over you know over seeing us all so that was an amazing thing we were having to pay service to about twenty different dynamics that's true and it was this kind of like everyone's noticing at different things so lorries in love with Joe Joe's in love with books she's mad and annoy to Aimee meg is sympathizing with Amy but Meg's also noticing John John is really noticing me like it like all of these dynamics that keep shifting and kind of being inside of the emotionality of each character as they're moving around each other it's a trick of not just where are you putting the camera it's where are you putting your emotion with everyone because what you want to feel at the end of it is that you were in the room and you felt everything that everyone was feeling and I loved your filmmaking in this scene because it's like you never let the camera totally be at rest with it life is messy you feel all these things but it's not suddenly the directors choice to go hey guys notice at this moment it will be importantly I like I like things that kind of a passed you by yes Beth would adore the piano is she there quietly yes that's our back tell the little girl to use our piano and Joe borrow whatever book you'd like can I come look at the paintings yes there's also a lovely greenhouse we must go I'm going to take this minute it's one thing Oh miss med you've got your glove well back to work so this dynamic if this whirlwind of people coming into the house and this excitement and then they're leaving and they're talking the entire way out what's happening in the end is disease that's standing around that's like my experience of my father and brother it's just my mom and my sister and I leave and they're like hey I love that about them and right after that Timothy you you do something they couldn't I cut off like literally to the frame right after that you go one more frame anyone's like no is there one more frame and no no it's gonna pose me it's great I couldn't read you correct me if I'm mistaken this is the best that's that that's like the way I wear the most this is the one you wear the most we have a bunch of us that actually Saoirse ends up wearing at different they end up switching vests the whole movie because they were you know they're androgynous other half which is something that Jacqueline invented with the two of them and then you would always take your jackets off because you liked your billowy sleeves yeah yeah yeah yeah why you didn't want to be encumbered yeah by a jacket a costume designer Jacqueline Duran she's an incredible costume designer and I don't know I find that you work with an somebody who's an excellent head of a department and movies are I guess just in life and then you realize like how good people could be a bad job kind of thing and egoless she's a very emotional costume designer she always comes at it from an emotional angle and I've been working with her since I was like 12 that's right oh really - yeah she did Anna yeah no that's and for me it was very helpful to know that like the other girls had to wear a corset and I didn't and I and Joe like chooses not to wear a hoop or sometimes even an underskirt and so with the results she just had this like freedom of movement and fluidity and I could you know walk like a boy and I could slash and I couldn't do the laura dern and hand move so yeah but I'll helps color is always something that's very important like everybody has their color mmm amy has her blue skirt which is her color Saoirse as joe has this red cape and Emma as Meg always has green and they have these specific colors and this is I mean this is hyper nerdy but this green scarf that Emma's wearing I remember the first time Jacqueline showed it to me and I thought that is too bright that feels like chartreuse and she said no no no in the 1850s they just figured out how to dye fabrics really outrageous colors and we think of the past as being monochromatic because all of the photographs are sepia but actually they were dying their ball gowns like bright orange or bright yellow I write you know like these really bright electric colors and so this woven scarf which she had made is actually with the dye that they would have had at the time and then the other beautiful thing that I'm gonna point out is Laura's colors which is the little dimmer here but all of Laura's costumes weave the colors of the four girls in her costumes because she is all of them in one and different parts of her spirit went into each girl and the same was true of her hair that she had a little pieces of each of them in her hair and it was just those kinds of details of character that to me it's like what helps me believe in this world that we're making and also I make movies that I want I hope some nerdy lady will watch it 20 times and pick up on all this stuff and I want them to have lots of goodies anyway I tried to keep things together as much as possible but there was no way with the schedule with the we were Four Seasons ten years eight plotlines and there was no way to keep all of those in order we did shoot the end at the end on sketch on schedule now reciate snow reshoots but it was it had to keep all of these things in their minds so they always had to know where they were because we were flipping back and forth much more I wish I wish it was the 70s when we could just be like see you in springtime I'm just gonna put a Big Sur and work on the pottery there's a Richard Burton Elizabeth Taylor documentary about that movie they did in Big Sur and he's like just drink a jug of wine and work on your pottery like the scene from ghost Roberta's yes you could just see Elizabeth Taylor like Richard that's Richard could we do this well back to work

Channel: Vanity Fair

Views: 3,226,541

Keywords: little women, little women 2019, notes on a scene, little women notes on a scene, vanity fair notes on a scene, laura dern, greta gerwig, timothee chalamet, saoirse ronan, saoirse ronan little women, little women cast, little women interview, timothee chalamet interview, laura dern interview, saoirse ronan interview, greta gerwig interview, little women film, new little women, vanity fair, laura dern oscars, saoirse ronan oscars, little women oscars, oscars 2020

Id: Li9ff4rQlck

Length: 13min 39sec (819 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 17 2019