The Making of The Matrix (1999)

this is a movie takes place in another time in another place with unbelievable visual and special effects The Matrix is a science fiction film but it's also an action-adventure film you see things that are fantastic and they say wait a second that's impossible prison when they explain to me the kind of movie that they were trying to make I got really fired up about it because nobody's made this kind of movie synthesizing evolution acting in a construct giving flesh to a cartoon soul to a machine the movie takes place somewhere in the distant future and as a time when computers rule the world a world of people who believe they're real but actually they're not they're living inside a computer program and there are a number of other people within that who are trying to liberate those people from their captivity it's about the idea we take everything for granted when other times it feels like it's about hope and love and and belief it's about robots versus come food and there's some crazy action Sydney's a beautiful town I get it they and never seen them quite like it switch unemployed active wouldn't want five months in Australia that's better fill me on a location in Sydney he is actually picked a pleasure we're in a great city that's got a lot of lot to offer and a very professional crew well here we are in in Sydney in a beautiful new facility this stage is literally brand new or the first movie in the stage' we moved in here to build these sets the paint was wet on the walls I mean it literally be not touch the walls they're wet yeah powder or Macklin is it okay if I kind of come forward it's always a difficult thing to ask anybody were to get your ideas from nobody knows he just sort of happened friend of ours asked us to come up with a concept for a comic book we like kung-fu movies we like japanimation we like you know John Woo movies and books that are you know science fiction that is about the sort of nature of reality you've been living in a dream world neo this is the world as it exists today we're interesting about the whole idea of cyberpunk isn't so it's a great way to create a sense of alienation and disconnection and alternate worlds being caught in sort of these quasi dream quasi conscious States come up me up like this that's the one that's the look I first met Clara nanny when I read assassin and it really was an incredible script it was a very dark edgy piece of material and I really was impressed with that style and they showed me this animated a Japanese cartoon and they said we want to do that for you and knowing that was an incredible idea I mean to actually see that animation come to life and believe me essentially it has you've had our eye on you for some time now mr. Anderson in one life you're Thomas a Anderson program writer for a respectable software company the other life is lived in computers where you go by the hacker alias neo and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for I play a man named Thomas Anderson who's looking for a man named Morpheus who's played by Laurence Fishburne I'm searching for the answer to a question the question is what is the matrix my character fields that the answer to this question will somehow make sense of his life at last my characters called Morpheus and Morpheus as a person who lives in the real world and he's the leader of his band of people looking for the one you felt it your entire life but there's something wrong with the world you don't know what it is but it's there like a splinter in your mind is this like fevered missionary guy is like as old as we think there's something dangerous about people who believe they have the truth them they they do sort of act blindly this is your last chance after this there is no turning back you take the blue pill the story ends you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe you take the red pill you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes there's a couple references to Nelson Wonderland in the movie I think that that is a brilliant book she comes into this world there are all this craziness and people just give her things and say eat this drink this and everything affects your in changes or nothing makes sense nothing logical it's just it's just the way you have to do it then we tried to do that with the beginning of the film the thing that I love about Trinity is that I'm pretending someone who's really really strong and who has a real mission and a real purpose can you fly that thing not yet operator take I need a pilot program for a bt 212 helicopter she's a warrior yes I don't think that she's lost being a woman agent Smith is the law enforcement and he's a seemingly invincible machine who develops these wonderful human frailties it was an accident goddamn car accident cipher it was a disciple strongest Isle of Martha's but now I've had second thoughts did he tell you why did it why you here Jesus what a mind job so you're here to save the world speaking about Larry and Andy together as a pair as a team of writers I liken them to the Brothers Grimm I have to imagine that that's what the Brothers Grimm were like somebody's gonna be here is gonna they work very well together we've got a wonderful said to him so you do get a you do get a dialogue happening that is normally just within the one directors here so it's normally one director talking to themselves working out a problem and then expressing their solution to that problem whereas with Larry and Andy you'll see you'll see the dialogue going on just like real guys and there's none of that that kind of Hollywood thing is not evident at all you know they're from Chicago you know they were shorts they wear baseball hats they they watch basketball games they love movies they love you know they get so excited there's nothing greater than doing a scene for them and then get and for them to get excited and I will be a superhero seek and search for clarity they're very thoughtful and yet they're very um they have a wonderful sense of humor it's really you know unusual the directors are so sure of what they want they write the script they know exactly what they want they know exactly what angle they want to see that what the actor should say how we should turn what it takes the breath in his speech I mean they know it exactly the brothers had storyboards and fight sequences that they they wanted to see certainly no punches and kicks and flips they wanted to see let's see some of the framing of you know Frank Miller there are some Japanese angles and perspectives in it dodge this they worked with people that they knew from the comic book world and designed these fantastic things we want them to first want to release during eating and they said okay now we know we've bought something cool we don't know what it is you just take us through it once they help translate the movie for us nobody really understood level of the action and action sequences and then when we'd show the storyboards people would go oh geez the scale you can pull off those fantastic thinking freeze a moment and make an image sort of sustained there's some action I think you can do a better comics some things that we're better than film confuse great on film right now supposed to start with these operation programs first let's made you're bluffing [ __ ] it's just a little more fun about combat training jiu-jitsu I'm going to learn jujitsu ow we want to do the action differently one of the things we love about Hong Kong action is or that they shoot fights and long takes and wider angles but they also do this wire work which is it's very fluid and people you know fly around and jump incredibly it's very poetic everybody has a superhuman and supernatural brave we wanted to bring that kind of wire work for me don't do your feet go up too high like more out it look better yeah when I first became involved Larry and Andy were a little frustrated because their dream was to work with this guy that had done fist of legend and through contacts in Hong Kong we tracked the gun turned out to be woo-ping whooping rocks he's one of the best we love his movies you've been watching them for years like as a gun for lon what they're facing paisa so he said I really don't know how they got my number ten about me already knew is he wasn't how he was in Beijing making a movie and got a call from Hong Kong saying that the two brothers were really interesting on talking to him he said I'm very busy I don't have the time but I can come and then the call came again he read the script and he thought that script was a very brilliant script so he decided that he should do it one of the incredible experiences on this movie and unlike any other movie I have done is that our four leads spent three or four months training with looping and his Hong Kong stunt team the these aren't athletes they're actors you know when you want someone to paint your house you hire a painter not an actor who makes believe he's a painter they really had to learn a fighting style that they never had learned before it was a tremendous hardship but it is evident on the film when you see it that that's Lawrence and that's Carrie Anne and that is piano in those scenes doing that stuff and it's it's astounding we started training in October of 97 trained all the way through till March of 98 that was on like an everyday basis it was a very involving exhausting process which are I initially thought we were going to be don't come through for maybe four or five weeks something like that I end up being months and months of training see one could you the interesting thing is in the the challenge week and the challenge is how we can make these people look as though they know they are born with the skills yeah we all sort of have our own person that is our teacher and my teacher's name is Maude I he really held my hand in the beginning and was very hard on me at the same time too is Keanu's main guy there too doesn't speak in English then we have Deon who oversees all of us and as he speaks better English than the rest of the guys sort of our go-between both pagan and us we've had various movie coming from dojos in Los Angeles and in Australia and at lunch we said there are legs you know I'm trying to open the rusty gates and stretch and watch kung-fu movies and see what was good and bad I really didn't know if I would be able to do what they were asking me to do I was going everyday and getting on the wires and and being lifted up just to get the feeling of being lifted up on the wire and then you know practicing sort of getting up the wall and then having the wall patted and then going along the padded wall and then them taking the pad off and me being terrified like I couldn't do the wire that day the day they took the pads off the wall because I was so afraid he's very inventive and organic the way he works and you know you must have your own style but you also have to have you know and good come through initiative thing was paying that and the wire team they took us on and and so we were useless which we were hopeless it come foo and but they slowly realized after a couple of weeks maybe we were going to be able to get to a level where we'd be halfway dish reading intense there's a lot of fun and again it's that's the kind of thing that you very rarely get an opportunity to do something like this I mean I feel incredibly blessed to have worked with hooping and his team okay so do you need guns lots of guns have stopped everybody a rubber handgun just so when I go over the nomenclature what the weapons parts are you guys understand what you are you can physically have something these are 100% safe turn toe everybody pick up your weapon and hold it with two hands and put it out in front almost everybody has a great position you tried to you know not do comes away they're always done supposed to be at each other what are you doing direct bears yes I tried to make it kind of funny did you please remove any metallic items you're carrying keys loose change the sets on the picture all originated from the visual design film that Larry and II achieved in storyboarding film they're executed by and built and designed by our Patterson with our production designer now this only sort of full of many many details but not the families trying to create an environment which is really just an illusion this is my ship the Nebuchadnezzar this is the main deck and we're trying to use my contemporary technology and it's sort of slightly retro fashion and something that looks a little bit different to your archetype sort of spaceship we've sort of fallen back a great deal onto and utilize this Larry now he wanted us to do a lot of Geof Darrow's drawings which were the original conceptual thing that we're trying to promote that idea of reality that isn't real till you look at it and go oh that's a real place that there are they to be losing sort of within it oh I think they're some of the most beautiful and spectacular stunt stuff we I've ever been involved with whoa there's style and visual effects and these actions it has not ever been seen before what time registered trademark enter the data the gate of force let's get the wind cue right here nobody's around you might want to spin around and face the subject in this particular rig there are 120 cameras and 2 motion picture cameras set up a bullet time is something that was conceived for the matrix specifically but I think it's a byproduct of the directors observing technology and then they asked the right question at the right time that's the that's the money cam it the board over your head I could shoot the same exact stunt several times over I can also do things like I can go forwards in time but then I could also choose to stop the camera abruptly start moving backwards against itself while it actually continues to move forward I can create a three-dimensional construction of the object everything begins with the simulation and all the math for how to shoot it works backwards from there these guys have a lot of specific notions about the worlds that they're they're creating I left pretty over-the-top in terms of what they want you allowed to do things break the rules that you wouldn't ami do we were changing speeds left riders enter we're going to slow motion to high speed jump cutting crossing by in there to achieve what seems like a fairly simple thing to do to fly a helicopter down the front of the building shoot a window out and rescue someone by jumping out the window it seems it will see it in the film as seamless objectives but in fact it's been shot in two different buildings it's been shot on a big set figure out how to make that scene work we wanted the glass to explode and sort of an ever-expanding circle and to actually figure out how to make the glass do that what glass to use it probably took three months of heavy-duty research I think it's such a rare experience for a good with actors in film maybe in theater but in film to have been working together will must have been working together for a year by the end of this so it's been it's great kind of a melding of of heart and soul and spirit and action I'm working in a film of this magnitude has been an enormous eye-opener for me it's kind of chased away P demons for me and it's educated me a little bit more and just working on a film with this sort of budget and on this other scales been a great experience and I really think that this is the first film of the next century the next of the millennia the year y2k or they're calling it it is monumental I think it is it's groundbreaking I think it's some people have never seen before it's going to take people's breath away and I think that you know there gonna be a lot of films are going to kind of be disciples of this movie and I think Andy and Larry are going to start a new visual style that you know will be very you know well-known and well remember you

Channel: Andrew Rayner

Views: 377,750

Rating: 4.942215 out of 5

Keywords: Matrix, The Matrix, Documentary (TV Genre), Film, Keanu Reeves (TV Actor), Wachowski Brothers, Morpheus (Fictional Character), Neo, Trinity

Id: 8ufqaDx4iuQ

Length: 25min 56sec (1556 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 21 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/fultron]

I don't know if it's online, but there's a feature length documentary in the matrix box set called "The Burly Man Chronicles" about the making of the second and third movies. Really incredible since they shot back to back for more than a year in Australia.