- And he's looking right into the camera lens.
Right here, look at those eyes.
Never do this if you're in a movie.
Hello, I'm Rian Johnson.
I wrote and directed Glass Onion
and this is Notes on a Scene.
- Oh my god.
- We can't hug, right? - No.
- I mean, can we I just wanna hug everybody.
- Hi Peg. - Hey.
- Yes please.
- Did you two stay at the hotel last night?
I didn't see you.
- No, Birdie, we clearly just arrived.
But you.
Hello stranger danger.
- Myles Bron, who is played by Edward Norton
is a tech billionaire.
He's invited all of his douchey friends
to a private island in Greece for a murder mystery party.
And this is a scene where everybody first shows
up on the dock.
[serene music]
This was the very first shot that we did
in the entire movie.
Day one, shot one.
You can see we got that beautiful glimpse of the sun
off the water, it was nice and early.
Matches nothing else in the scene lighting wise,
but it's gorgeous.
So who cares?
First movie, cozy brown, New England sweaters.
This movie we got the blues and yellows of summer in Greece
with beautiful swimwear.
And so instantly we know this is a whole new deal
and I wanted to establish really clearly
for the audience right off the bat,
we're going to have them be totally new deals
every single time.
And for me, this goes back to the original source
of inspiration for all of this which is my love of
Agatha Christie's work and her books.
She was coming into each one with a totally different
conceptual approach and she was trying twists and turns
and narrative gambits and she was
subverting the trips of the genre from the very start.
Leslie Odom Jr. showing up right here.
Leslie worked with Jenny Eagen, who's our costume designer.
Jenny has a task with these movies and making people look
as distinct as characters in the game of Clue
but also looking like somebody that would be walking around
in the real world.
Daniel sat down with Jenny and he said
I want to be Jacque Tati by way of Cary Grant
in To Catch A Thief.
And I was very proud the instant I saw him show
up in that hat.
I said, little Jacque Tati.
And then I saw the like, the high wasted pants and I'm like
is that little Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief?
So, my voice went up eight octaves.
[horn beeping]
Kathryn Hahn starting as Claire Debella.
Poor Kathryn, talking about costumes.
Kathryn showed up and she's like, oh,
I'm in a Benoit Blanc mystery.
Everyone wears fabulous costumes.
This is gonna be amazing.
And she shows up and she walks past the racks
of clothes and there's Kate's rack that's glimmering colors
and there's Daniel's rack that's all these fabulous outfits.
And then she gets to her rack.
And as you can see here
my directive to Jenny Eagen was beige.
I just wanted her in sad tans and beige.
I wanted, I think of the phrase that I used,
I said I wanted to be the sad trumpet noise
of costumes in this movie.
- Governor.
- Hi you genius.
[classical music]
- So here is Kate Hudson starring
as Birdie Jay, making a fabulous entrance.
Oh my God, here is Nicos who is a producer
at our company and he's looking right into the camera lens.
This makes me so happy,
I've completely busted Nicos.
Right here. Look at those eyes.
Never do this if you're in a movie.
Nicos, I love you so much.
And then back here you can see Birdie's lung
suffering publicist Peg who's played
by Jess Henwick back here, barely holding on.
And in terms of Jenny Eagen and the costumes
Birdie was kind of like a joy.
Birdie was the one where you just kind of
she used to be like a fashion designer in the movie
so Jenny could really go to town.
As opposed to the first movie where we kind of come
into the story through Ana de Armas character
in this one we're kind of coming into it
through Blanc's eyes.
So, one thing my editor Bob Ducsay and I would do
we would keep cutting back to these little looks from him
and see him taking all of this in.
I think that's kind of a cue
to the audience to watch carefully
but it also keeps us grounded in his perspective.
- Hello.
Oh my god, we can't hug, right?
I mean, can we?
- Hi Peg. - Hey.
- Yes please.
- The camera is pulling back and it's pulling forward.
So here start with a perfectly framed thing
of the cart creating this great shape along the left
guiding your eye back to Birdie.
And we get a full shot of Birdie 'cause we wanna give her
kind of the dancer's introduction of hello, here I am.
And all of the lines are guiding you back to Birdie.
If you look this and this,
it's all taking your eye right here where the money is.
Kate Hudson.
So we've now introduced Birdie and now the camera
is going to move back with her
from our perfect frame rise up 'cause it's now all gonna be
about heads as we come back and reveal Kathryn
and Leslie.
Jump and we still keep Peg exactly right there.
Jess hit her mark perfectly, so she's still deep
in the background and you'll notice we're still
from their gazes going back here
and all the lines are still leading us back
to where we wanna be looking, which is Kate.
But as she goes back and forth to him and to her,
she wants to hug them, but no way.
Those lines work for Blanc too.
Oh look at that.
Oh my god, your eye is in the exact same part of the frame.
Directing.
- Hello. Oh my god, we can't hug, right?
I mean, can we?
- Hi Peg. - Hey.
- If you take a look, I mean the camera was
basically like right here, essentially.
We're seeing the ground which all means we can't have
Dolly Track and to move the camera on a surface like this
you can't just roll it
because it would be bouncing all over the place.
So we're on a jib arm here.
And so we have a remote head which is basically a little
you know, robot head that the camera is on
that can move all sorts of directions on the end of a long
pole, which is a jib.
It's, if I ignore these beautiful, these beautiful actors
who basically have a dolly and then we have a
counter-weighted jib and then there's a camera head here
and then the camera itself is mounted right there.
Boy that's a horrible drawing.
The jib operator stands back here
and is also the dolly operator and he's doing two things.
He's pulling the dolly back, he's also levering the jib arm
to do that little rise that you saw before.
Meanwhile our camera operator, Dale Myron is back
off someplace else at his little station
and he's got basically a monitor
and he has a couple of wheels.
He has a wheel that turns this way
and a wheel that turns this way and he's operating the pan
and the tilts of the camera remotely.
That's what lets us do this move of jump
'cause is a fairly wide lens where they're actually
fairly tight together right here
to do that little reveal both of them.
- Hi.
- Yes please.
- Did you two stay at the hotel last night?
I didn't see you.
- No Birdie, we clearly just arrived.
- Again all trying to frame this in terms of Blanc taking
in this stage show and so, Blanc's little kind of
step forward here 'cause he recognizes Birdie Jay
and also just guiding it all to Blanc is taking this in.
He also looks a bit like Claude Rains
in The Invisible Man here, which I quite enjoy.
- No Birdie, we clearly just arrived.
- But you.
- One of the things I'm always very gratified
if it gets a laugh is Kate's mask.
So I wrote this movie in 2020,
I wrote it during lockdown,
which is probably part of the reason why it takes place
on the Greek islands like everyone else in the world.
I was sitting home and fading in Greek island,
let's see if this works.
It's like where I wanted to be.
But the notion of just something I think all of us
experienced the notion of defining people's personalities
based on their choice of of mask wear.
You can see Kathryn back there has, wow very beige mask.
You'll see Lionel, who's supposed to be a scientist
he has a very proper N95 mask.
Blanc has a very dapper mask that's coordinated
to his outfit.
And Kate, I think we all knew some version of this person
she's trying, she's wearing, she's like, I'm masked,
what do you want?
First of all, I should make clear very quickly
we're gonna be on Myles' private island and get rid
of the masks.
This is not a mask movie, but for this one scene
it was very interesting.
Directing with a mask is tough because the communication
is such a huge part of what you do on set
and more than that, being an audience for the actors
is such a huge part.
Literally them just seeing you smiling at a joke
that they're doing or laughing or being back behind.
So it just, it's very tough with a mask
but it makes you focus in more on the eyes I think.
I also think it's kind of trained us how to
how to kind of see mask acting.
- Did you two stay at the hotel last night?
I didn't see you.
- No Birdie, we clearly just arrived.
- But you, hello stranger danger.
- This is another fun thing.
Leslie has now gone deep
and we pulled back a little further.
So Kathryn's here, but what's gonna happen here is
without moving the camera at all
Kate is going to transform the frame
by coming up to a closeup
and the shape of her hat then completely defines the frame.
- But you, hello stranger danger.
- Mr. Blanc, you are stranger danger?
- Stranger danger.
That's Nicos' is one line.
Nicos is is Greek.
So, and I'm gonna stop picking on Nicos now.
- You are stranger danger?
- What is Kathryn doing?
Is she smelling herself?
She is.
[laughing]
If you watch Kathryn Hahn in the background of this movie
it's a whole other movie and I just know that she's
doing a little BO check right there, which seems very clear.
Well done Kathryn.
- You are stranger in danger?
- No, no that's fine because
I don't even know what that means.
- Wait a second.
Benoit Blanc?
- Oh my god.
Are you Benoit Blanc, the detective?
Did you solve the murder of
oh what's her name that the, the belly dancer?
- I want just like a poster just of Kathryn from this frame.
She gets very excited about Benoit Blanc being
on the island and she, her mask slips down to being like
a chin bra.
She gets excited and then, she catches herself, shoot.
Oh and even just like tiny little moments like that
like accuse you into, she's a, she's very conscious of the
of the mask etiquette
- The detective?
Did you solve the murder of oh what's her name that the
the belly dancer with the thing and the thing that's you?
- It is.
- So there's a very nice little thing that Leslie does here
where you can just see his eyes narrow a little bit.
He doesn't have much to work with.
He's got, you know, he is fully masked up here,
he's even wearing a hat.
So you just have this and there's a little moment
when he realizes there's a detective
along on this trip where you see him kind of like
you see him paying attention.
I love that moment when you're working with an ensemble
of actors and you're getting all these closeups
and you're running the scenes and just having them do it
stuff like this is pure gold when you get in the edit room
because you're looking for these little moments
the actors give you that's gonna give you a hint
of more going on than was originally on the page
and keeping everybody alive in the scene in a group.
It's a big part of what we do in the edit room.
- That's you?
- It is in the flesh.
I'm obviously familiar with you all as well,
governor, Dr. Tucson, Ms. Birdie Jay
what an extraordinary gathering.
- Blanc, again is very much the audience
for the introduction of all these characters
and I very much loved how this pier lent itself to that.
We have him isolated on this side with the ocean behind him
and then when we cut back to them, we have a stage basically
for blocking wise these people are putting
on a performance and we're seeing each of them kind of
display their personalities for Blanc.
So, let's just completely embrace that.
Logistically very, very difficult because we are actually
on this relatively narrow little pier, little jetty
so there's nowhere to go.
So actually the boat that shows up later in the scene
we had it parked at the end the whole time
just so that we could stage camera equipment and stuff
on it and have like a little place for the actors to
to go and cool off 'cause it was also,
it was in the high nineties when we were shooting this.
But it also meant that I basically had two directions
to shoot him looking at Blanc
and then we go this shot looking back, not at Blanc.
The nice thing about this was it made me really focus on
blocking in terms of the characters
and trying to create depth,
but trying to make sure that you could see everybody
in this frame is a good example of that.
So, it also means the actors have to be very, very precise.
We have to give them exact marks to hit.
You know, if Kathryn was one step to the left
she'd be blocking Birdie.
If Lionel was one step to the right, he'd be blocking Peg.
Kind of like a very delicate dance
especially when everyone has to move into these positions.
And we'll see an even better example of that when
Dave Bautista arrives.
I promise he's coming.
I know everyone's waiting for Dave Bautista to show up.
- What an extraordinary gathering?
[shooting]
[engine revving]
- This scene used to be much, much longer in the first cut
of the movie, it was sort of a thing where when
everyone showed up, they had a little conversation
to begin with.
This scene was a bit like the library scene
at the beginning of Knives Out.
Really quickly we realized pacing wise we also kind of wanna
just, you know, get through it and get to the island
and get to the mystery.
My editor and I ended up cutting it shorter and shorter.
There used to be, when you hear the gunshot
we have these beautiful drone shots of Dave
and Maddie riding on this motorcycle along
like a coastal road that's absolutely stunning.
And so we cut away to that and big sweeping music.
But it's a sort of thing where it looks gorgeous
and it's beautiful and it's awesome
and then you put the scene together and the scene's too long
and it's just, well hear the gunshots, see him arrive.
And luckily we had done this little transition shot going up
and over the luggage, so the cut works.
[engine revving]
- Crew,
we've arrived.
- I love that insert shot.
I don't know, it's a little Coen brothers like detail
but I spent a lot of time getting that insert shot
exactly right.
Although I think you can kind of see it's not
our first take.
You can see the scrape on the ground.
It's already there from-
Movie magic that I'm ruining for you all right here.
- Disruptors have assembled.
- This shot I was quite proud of,
this take because the blocking of it evolves as we go back,
we start this with Dave, we reveal Jess,
no way am I hugging you.
Kate comes in and then keeping Blanc alive back here
is the other thing and all these reverses.
Again, always thinking that we're seeing the,
seeing the scene through Blanc's eyes.
Also, may I point out Kathryn's sad yellow visor,
which she took great joy in.
- Hey guys, remember my girl Whiskey?
- Hi.
- Of course, Whiskey.
- Hello.
- Who's that?
- Why are you in Greece Mr. Blanc?
- This type of blocking where it's a lineup
and it's a very exact and precise.
You know, Wes Anderson is like the first director
that I go to who does this a lot.
It's something where you're also trying to create depth
in the frame.
So, it's foreground, mid ground, and then background
with Jess doing her weird like stretches.
This is also a good frame to talk about the influence
of The Last of Sheila on this movie.
The Last of Sheila is a murder mystery from the seventies
that was co-written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins.
It's an incredible murder mystery.
We take a real page from it
in terms of the setup of this movie.
There's a scene at the beginning where they all arrive
at the dock and there's a famous thing where they all line
up for a photo.
Kate is very much channeling Dyan Cannon from that movie.
- Why are you in Greece Mr. Blanc?
- I was invited by Myles Bron.
- Tight with Myles?
- No, never met.
- You're trying to be as economic as possible
in terms of the storytelling.
You're trying to get across as much as possible,
the whole gag of everyone hears his gun
and he is firing his gun and he makes a big deal out of it.
Not a huge spoiler that in the murder mystery
the gun will probably play a part
at some point in the story.
So, we're trying to set it up through moments that don't
feel like they're setting it up.
The other thing that we're trying to communicate
and the blocking has a lot to do with this
is the characters relationships to each other
and how they kind of relate to each other.
Claire and Lionel kind of have a connection in this movie,
sort of the grownups of the whole group.
So grouping them together in the foreground
and putting them on equal plane,
connecting up Duke who Dave plays and Whiskey,
who Maddie plays, having them always paired together
is important and then, Kate in the background with Peg,
always deep background.
There's kind of a running gag that Peg
because she's the assistant
she's just constantly ignored throughout the weekend.
And so, having her always present in the frame
but always kind of in behind, behind, behind
in the deep background.
- Oh, I get it.
The murder mystery thing.
Benoit Blanc is gonna help solve the mystery
of Myles' murder.
This should be fun.
- Cute.
- Well, we'll see.
[horn beeping]
- And here's the boat.
Casting wise with this movie,
I mean I just I'm the luckiest guy in the world.
Look at this lineup right here.
With casting, with these movies
you're trying to obviously get the best person
for each role and the best actor for each role.
You're also kind of throwing a dinner party
and putting together an invite list for a dinner party
because this is a true ensemble
and every single one of these people could and have
carried their own movies entirely.
And they're coming out for a few months to Greece
to click together and work in frames like this one
that you're seeing here where they're all playing together.
This is also giving every single one of these actors
and characters an entrance.
And giving them a theatrical entrance where
they part the curtains, step out to center stage
and get a little round of applause and recognition
before we actually get into all the murder and mayhem.
Which is good for several reasons.
It's mostly good from a storytelling point of view
because you need to be able to track every single one
of these people going forward.
So having a scene at the beginning where
they step out to the end of the stage
and make their introductions like this,
it was a great way to start.