Film Courage: What was the most stressful scene while filming Joker. Joker Cinematographer Lawrence Sher, ASC: That's a great question.
Film Courage: How did you push through it? Lawrence: I don't think there was a thing you know the
scene when he finds the letter that she's written to Thomas Wayne and then
he confronts her right he confronts her and she runs into the bathroom and and
his mom and he's outside the bathroom it's a very short scene in the movie
when we shot it is a bit longer it started in the bedroom he kind of wakes
her up and then they go into the bathroom and right now it's just kind of
like truncated in a good way I think but that was a bit of a stressful scene
because initially it was written that he was even gonna wait longer it was gonna
actually happen the next morning he was gonna confront her and so we had planned
to do it as the script was and all these things and I think just an example of
the ways in which we would often just Zig away from our plan all the time that
was one of those examples and it came very abruptly it was like we were gonna
shoot that the next day and it was he finds the letter and I think Todd was
like let's just go right into it I was there okay okay so it just became a
little bit of a stressful thing not because of the change of plan but
because I think part of me really liked the fact that he waited and there was
some elements of that that I was so important so I think it just shook me up
a little bit and it just I remember it as a stressful shooting day you know and
and I'm glad the way it ends up in the movie which is what it is but even the
result of the way we started in her in the bedroom and I did just remember it
was like a day in which you know Todd and I were arguing a bit and I just it
was a memory of a stressful day for sure but not necessarily because of the scene
itself you know even though it's a emotional scene and he's confronting his
mom and all this stuff it was more of just the way that sometimes scenes in a
movie or the the practical nature of shooting the movie can become stressful
you know time constraints or or differences of opinion
that kind of way so that's I think a memory of some other day being stressful
and where was the apartment constructed on its steiner studio in Brooklyn so the
worry Franklin set and the apartment were at Steiner and and and and that
apartment was boring Friedberg the designer did an amazing job that
apartment was pretty like it was built you know a story up so so look you know
like I wasn't on an upper floor but it it was all of his apartment right which
was at the bedroom in the bathroom in that main living area with the kitchen
but that that long hallway is also part of that as well that was also built on
stage and it's like it I don't even know a hundred feet of hallway and that
actually leads right to Sophie's room so that whole little quadrant of like
Sophie's the the long hallway and Arthur's apartment was one big stage on
set so it was pretty pretty spectacular because I think to get that long hallway
would that would feel like the tenement that that he lives in you know just
involved a lot of space but that hallway obviously plays a lot into the movie as
well as the elevator which was also there as well and then downstairs the
elevator is part of the practical location that we shot with Brooke in the
Bronx like when he's you know so those tie in together through a movie mansion
did you have to do any retakes on enough like in LA or did you know and I
remember Todd at one point we did do some reshoots so and that has become I
think more commonplace because Todd doesn't like reissues I think resuits a
super common place in big-budget movies often they'll do two or three big
reshoots you know in which they'll shoot for weeks I've been apart a lot of them
a shot of many reshoots on the first Godzilla I've done reshoots on big
movies you know so I recognize what that is as far as modern filmmaking Todd in
our six movies together we've shot two additional days and only one reshoot in
six movies okay yeah and the other additional day was like a coda that we
added to the end of hangover 3 and so it was like one of those things where it
was like oh we need to shoot one more thing to add as opposed to even a
reshoot but I think with this and Todd so you know even on war dogs
and other movies I think Todd's become more more to the to the mindset of like
rather than bring people back which is so hard to get them back in the frame of
mind and all that stuff if I feel like there's something I want to try
differently I'll reshoot it while we were shooting
so like in war dogs we shot one scene two times in which we shot it he looked
at it anyway and I think there's something we can do better
so we'd reshoot it so we did that a couple times on on Joker also
recognizing and remember Todd [Phillips] said this is like the the physical transformation
that Joaquin [Phoenix] did losing all that weight I don't know if he can do this again so
the idea that you would cut the movie nine months later asked for Keane to re
transform his body and to that was just untenable so I think Todd to his credit
really recognized that like if there's anything we feel like even we might want
to reshoot we have to do it now we have to do it within the body of like the
days we have so I think in the last couple weeks of shooting we we allowed
for like a little bit of reshooting that we would do not a lot but just a little
bit as well as like even the idea that like if you had an idea that would come
up after you edited the movie like oh I wish we had more scenes of him just by
himself exploring insomnia at night which you might come up with once you
cut it then we started going well if we're gonna do that let's do that now
so I think that's like the scene where he crawls into the refrigerator it was
an example of that whereas I wasn't in the script but it was like through the
exploration of either now seeing cuts or just thinking about the movie like Todd
is as an editor as well I think he recognized now is our time to do it we
can't wait until you know after the movies cut
you