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Man: Tails on A, B mark.
(Clap)
Man: Ready... and action.
(Engine revving)
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(Jeff beeping)
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(Fan motor)
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(Engine revving)
Miguel Sapochnik: I like world creation.
Miguel Sapochnik: I think as world building, it’s really interesting but the idea was
making a family movie that has a dark, quirky edge to it.
Storm alarm: Warning, shelter advised.
(Wind blowing)
Finch: Here we go!
(High-pitched ringing)
Miguel’s vision is extremely sharp and not intimidated by tough themes,
Tom Hanks: difficult shooting schedules,
Tom Hanks: or incredibly complicated effects shots.
(Wind meter)
The project originated with Miguel Sapochnik, the director,
Kevin Misher: who had developed it with the writers, Ivor Powell and Craig Luck.
Kevin Misher: Craig had actually started it as a short story
Kevin Misher: and they partnered to write the script and brought it to Miguel.
Craig Luck: Miguel, as a director, is an incredible visionary
because his visual style fit an epic movie so perfectly.
Ivor Powell: When the movie begins, it’s ten years after this post-apocalyptic event,
and we wanted to try and do something that was literally focused on the
Ivor Powell: relationship between the characters.
(Door opening) (Goodyear Barking)
Finch is an engineer and a computer scientist
Tom Hanks: and a developer of software
Tom Hanks: and as far as his part of the world, he’s the only guy left.
(Strong winds)
Tom Hanks: We’re in a facility that operated at a sound stage,
Tom Hanks: but when Finch has to escape from this part of the world,
then everything else that was outdoors we shot literally, you know, outdoors.
♪♪
Tom Hanks: So he has this escape vehicle
that he’s slowly been putting together and they gotta pile into the family RV and take off.
Tom Meyer: When we’re trying to create a world for these characters to exist in,
Tom Meyer: the RV is a central character.
We spend maybe fifty, sixty percent of the film on a road trip.
Tom Meyer: It’s something they can live in, it has a little kitchen,
Tom Meyer: and if I jack it up and I put it on big old monster truck wheels,
Tom Meyer: then I’m gonna roll over any obstacle I can.
(Crashing)
(Bang)
(Heavy winds)
(Heavy breathing)
We had fireman suits, and hazmat suits, and all different kinds of
Bart: outdoor boots and gloves and helmets and goggles,
Bart: and it was cool to see Tom think about what would Finch do with this stuff.
I had a lot of costume fittings and meetings, and
I was very glad to be in my ultraviolet protection suit there
Tom Hanks: because everybody else was just wind burned.
Tom Hanks: And I kinda got to sit inside with an air conditioned helmet even when we were outside.
When Tom puts it on, it almost instantly feels iconic.
♪♪
Get your elbows off the table.
Seamus, who is the acting dog that plays Goodyear,
I mean, he’s just an award winner as far as charm goes.
Miguel Sapochnik: Letting him do his own thing gets you far more interesting stuff,
and then he also has these great eyebrows.
Miguel Sapochnik: So anytime he kind of raises his eyebrow in one direction, it feels like a really big thing.
Jacqueline Levine: We hired the best dog trainer in the business in Mark Forbes,
and we basically auditioned a bunch of dogs.
Jacqueline Levine: We narrowed it down to two of our favorite dogs
Jacqueline Levine: and then we had Tom Hanks come in and help us decide on Seamus.
Seamus had verve.
Tom Hanks He carried with him a type of mysterious gravitas.
The projection, I think, that comes along with a man and his dog, in this case,
Tom Hanks: is that the audience begins to supply Seamus’ dialogue.
Alright, you’re next.
(Dog whimper)
Finch: Come here, dog breath.
(Goodyear growling) Finch: Come here.
Tom Hanks: They begin to understand what,
in this case, Goodyear is thinking and what his responses are to it.
Ooooh... where’s your ball?
Is it here?
Tom Hanks: I like to think that, as the actor,
Tom Hanks: I bring a number of goods to the mix.
Tom Hanks: Caleb, as Jeff, brings a substantial amount of elements to it that I cannot provide.
Tom Hanks: And what was missing from the movie, from the two of us, Seamus provided.
Now it is a classic triangle of lifeforms.
Tom Hanks: It is the canine lifeform, the human lifeform,
Tom Hanks: and Caleb Landry Jones as Jeff, this robot, this companion, actually.
(Bang)
Jeff: Would you like me to drive?
No, you just learned how to walk.
On this movie, we’re introduced to the project by Tom Meyer, the production designer,
Lindsay MacGowan: who came up with the designs for Dewey and for Jeff.
Lindsay MacGowan: Dewey is a much simpler character.
Lindsay MacGowan: Jeff is really Finch, and he learns throughout the whole movie how to become a man,
Lindsay MacGowan: whereas Dewey will always only ever be this character that can’t really emote.
(Crashes)
Jeff is really a great design and something that was ground in the real world.
Lindsay MacGowan: So his head is the top of a welding gas tank.
Lindsay MacGowan: A lot of his body parts are from finding things that you'd use in a real workshop.
Lindsay MacGowan: Jeff is six foot, six inches tall so we created stilts
Lindsay MacGowan: so the interesting part of the performance of Jeff is the gait of the walk.
We got so used to working with Caleb,
Miguel Sapochnik: and we used mo-cap, a movement suit, that records his movements.
Miguel Sapochnik: That’s been a really interesting and experimental thing.
And one of the other things that Miguel told me
Tom Meyer: when we were designing Jeff is: can opener, right in his chest,
Tom Meyer: right where his heart needs to be.
Tom Meyer: His heart is the well-being of the dog.
These robots take on a certain humanity that
Lindsay MacGowan: other robots in the past certainly don’t seem to have had.
Lindsay MacGowan: And I think you get that from the performance of puppeteers,
Lindsay MacGowan: Caleb and CG Jeff.
Storm alarm: Tornado detection, shelter advised.
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It was so windy that day,
Tom Hanks: that we had wind machines that lay unused
Tom Hanks: because we had about a fifty to sixty mile an hour wind that was blowin’ all the sand.
The great thing about CGI now,
Tom Hanks: is you can do anything, and I didn’t remember Caleb in costume.
Tom Hanks: I was just seeing Jeff as Jeff.
Finch: Get back in here!
What we have to create with visual effects is
Scott Stokdyk: the artificial intelligence robot based on Caleb’s performance
Scott Stokdyk: and kind of give the world a taste of the promise of what future technology is,
Scott Stokdyk: but then have this really dark world that’s very hard to survive in.
(Jeff barking) (Goodyear barking) -Finch: Hey! Hey!
What’s all the fuss?
Jeff: I learned to talk dog.
(Dewey beeping)
The beautiful thing that the film does,
Tom Hanks: that I think the audience recognizes,
Tom Hanks: is that, it is not human to be alone.
Tom Hanks: It is not human to be a solo being.
Tom Hanks: We must have company
Tom Hanks: because in company, we find companionship,
Tom Hanks: we find love.
Tom Hanks: That’s the high country, man,
Tom Hanks: when you can capture that on film.
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