Hi, I'm Amy Adams.
And I'm Joe Wright.
And we are going to break down a scene from
The Woman in the Window, shot by shot.
Slow down ma'am, what's your name and where are you?
I'm Anna, Anna Fox.
The Woman in the Window is based on a novel
and comes to screen following Anna Fox
who is suffering from agoraphobia
and has started sort of looking
at the world from her window.
She gets embroiled in a traumatic incident.
But it takes us on a ride inside of her psyche.
Anna has befriended a woman who lives across the street.
And she believes one night she witnesses a crime.
We would try to create a house
with a memory. With a former life, and so you see
in the background of this shot here, there's one
of her daughter's drawings pinned to the cabinet.
We tried to always
in frame have a sense and memory of her daughter.
There was only green screen out of these windows.
And I think that was an enormous challenge for you, Amy
you weren't looking at anything, were you?
- No. - I mean, you were looking at
a cross on a green screen
out of a window and giving these extraordinary reactions.
The biggest challenge for me
during this entire sequence is just threading that line
of tension over days of shooting, really.
Making sure we're building at the right pace.
Where's my phone?
So many stairs!
We wish it had been set in a bungalow after about week two
because we were up and down those stairs a lot
over the 10 or 11 weeks we were shooting in there.
David?!
The set that they built was all inside of this very
big studio in Brooklyn, the interiors, you could open
up the wall of the house at any time, and they were able to
shoot in it like a doll house.
And so we did a couple of shots where they did
long swinging shots, what they called dollhouse shots
where they opened up the side and went in
which was sometimes really scary because I'd be up
quite high on these sets, walking on stairs
with absolutely no wall.
Occasionally they would have a safety harness
because I'd be running during some of the more
thrilling moments.
It was very, very technical in the filming process
but that shot in particular because we were doing it
in what we call a 'oner,'
there was a lot of camera choreography.
I always think of it like a dance partner,
me and the camera.
So we had to really be
in sync with how we were doing it and
Definitely a dance between you and the camera
And then hitting the right point there
so that you're actually lit
through the light through the window.
I think it's one of most technical scenes I've ever shot.
The fact that you had it storyboarded so I had an
understanding of exactly what you guys were looking for.
I always knew like, okay, now we're going to go
to the feet and then we walked it through.
So it was very rehearsed and very choreographed.
When you come over
and you see the red umbrella exit, that shot right there.
I don't know what it is.
It just makes me crazy. I love it so much.
But even that I do remember when starting out there
I think we did what, 38 takes?
Yeah.
Yeah. My recollection, when I see it
I immediately go back to sort of a
a sense memory of feeling like I was going to pass out
which is appropriate given the anxiety state
of the character, but mine was caused
by going up and down those stairs, maybe 35
45 times and wearing cashmere and just being so hot.
It was really challenging, but really fun to be a part of.
I think the last shot of the movie that we shot
with you was that shot of your eyes.
- Yes. - Right?
We had a light on a piece of track,
kind of flying at you.
We hope you enjoyed this shot by shot breakdown.
Make sure and catch The Woman in The Window,
now on Netflix.
Anna, did you stab your neighbor?