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youshouldseemeinadeerstalker · 7 days ago

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bits and pieces from edward berger's director's commentary for conclave (2024), from the blu-ray:

- "it took me a long time to find the beginning of this movie, i'd shot a few other scenes which aren't worth to include in the deleted scenes section, it's like ralph getting a phone call, waking up, the mystery is building ..." (the blu-ray does not have a "proper" deleted scenes extra/featurette)

- "i had a session with ralph, basically watching the movie and listening to it on headphones and him breathing down the mic and reacting to what he was doing in the film, he saw it for the first time and breathed the whole film" (the blu-ray does not have a ralph-fiennes-breathing-asmr audio track)

- "catholic shenanigans"

- edward talks about the thought process behind casting an unknown actor like carlos as vincent, and describes the actor for vincent as someone who should be "very sensitive, very sensible, quiet and calm but confident"

- "first of all, [sergio] is very funny and see his joke here, he made it up, when he speaks about everyone sort of sitting at the tables ... 'francese', the french guys behind him ... so 'francese' is from him and i find it very funny" (sergio improvised 'the french' (and accompanying facial expression) in the evening dinner scene with ralph)

- "and here on 'poor man' we cut to this [a shot of thomas] because this is how ralph feels" (during the first confrontation scene between thomas and joseph, where joseph calls janusz "poor man")

- "we find everything in rome but we couldn't find long, interesting hallways, they were surprisingly white and plain" (on why they built the casa santa marta hallway set)

- "i don't want to cut away, i want to look into [ralph's] eyes, i want to look into his face, i want to lose myself in his face"

- "i want to have that robe and put it on" (referring to thomas' robes, after his homily)

- "sergio ... had a big red coat on, feeling very ostentatious, he's a show-off, and others are almost more protestant, ralph would be a bit more protestant, you know, quieter in his attire"

- edward specifically storyboarded the balloting scenes because he was worried they would be boring and repetitive

- "but the dynamic between stanley and ralph is great because they're friends, they're great—they love each other, they really respect each other, but they're such different actors. and that scene that you just saw, they were both pretty—felt like suddenly like why are they so—why is this scene taking so long, or why is it difficult to shoot. i think because they've so much respect for each other, that ... even if they don't want to, they're competing, they're combating. they want to impress the other. ralph wants to, i don't know, he probably will say it's total crap (laughs) what i'm saying, but ralph wants to be good for stanley, and wants to be, in a way, better, or say, like, he wants to have the respect of the other, and say like 'ralph thinks i'm a good actor', he thinks it anyway but deep down inside, you know insecurity's coming, and deep down inside you want to be good, you want to be as good or better than the other and so they were, kind of, little battling each other, it was very subtle but underneath it, it was there" ("rpf is fine" -edward berger)

- "he rehearses latin like a maniac" (guess who this is)

- "if he wouldn't have this [acting], again he'd probably protest this so don't play this for him, but if he wouldn't have this, he'd basically die, you know? he needs it, he needs it to survive, it's total fulfillment" (guess who part two)

- "[stanley's] personality is just 180 degrees different. he jokes around, he comes, he does a take, 'ah that was fine, let's move on,' where ralph would want another one, stanley would just (gibberish/imitates stanley's noises) it doesn't really matter, let's just move on"

- stanley at some point worried that he was being too american while the rest of the ensemble were all "proper cardinals" and edward had the same worries about stanley, not the being too american but the not giving the behind the eyes on-set (like ralph, edward's gold standard of seeing into the soul etc) but edward stopped worrying when they started editing because it was all there, edward felt like an "insensitive klutz of a director" for not seeing the "miracle of an actor" like stanley who one sees in the movie, not live

- edward stops talking so that the viewer can properly appreciate lucian's big scene, but interrupts to talk again with an "impatient, too impatient to be quiet, you can watch the movie some other time"

- "lucian isn't wearing a cross, which somehow makes him feel more naked, more bare. ralph is wearing his cross, the band around his neck where the cross is suspended on and it's just a big difference"

- the young pope mention: that show had a lot of cardinal costumes that the conclave production could have used, but didn't for reasons that edward and costume designer lisy christl have discussed elsewhere and everywhere

- "brian ... a wonderful actor from ireland, brings a slightly comedic tone to his performance here" + edward thinks brian "beautifully" did the overlong pause before ray tries to talk to thomas about the tremblay business after joshua's downfall + "i'm so thankful for that [brian's comedic tone] because it lightens up the theoretically heavy proceedings" + "so him and sergio are the humorous ones, which i'm grateful for"

- edward tells the story of how a cardinal in england let ralph put on his robe (and "ralph looked wonderful in it"), which alarmed edward because he could tell ralph was getting attached to the real robes, when the real robes didn't look good

- the location of thomas-aldo-giulio stairwell scene was a military school in rome

- edward thinks the real casa santa marta is "ugly"

- edward had to "coax ralph" into accepting that they're not gonna be totally accurate to the real conclave, vatican, clerical dress, etc

- ralph initially did not like his conclave costume because it was "thick, it's heavy, it's not the real thing", and even though he eventually "grew into it", "once in a while he had to take a jab and say, like, 'this is thick fabric, i'm hot under it,' you know, like, he was craving to have the real—real thing, but other actors like sergio was like, i love my costume because you know what, it feels like a cardinal's costume, look at them, how beautiful that red is ... sergio, john, stanley, they all embraced it [the conclave robes]"

- "we all end up in a body bag"

- edward discusses his lens choices for the film, really technical but interesting for those curious about that (and conclave was shot on the RED v-raptor because the DOP/cinematographer stéphane fontaine liked that camera)

- john's big scene was "complicated" because many of the extras in the scene didn't speak english and didn't know what was going on (probably couldn't react quickly to john and ralph's english dialogue?)

- the morning dining-room scene was shot in a kitchen/canteen in a military base

- edward points out that thomas and aldo's last scene together deliberately didn't have any repeating shot angles because he didn't like going back and forth

- they shot the explosion scene twice because the first time didn't look "real enough"

- "i think everyone's favorite new discovery is sergio ... because he's just so authentic and that's the italian [language], and it made ralph speak more italian ... where else are we such an international community than the vatican, they come from all over the world, and they have 50 different languages, and italian unites them"

- carlos's monologue was reshot after the movie was "locked and done" because: 1) they had $400,000 left over from the budget, 2) "the world had changed after our shooting because of the attacks in israel and just the world felt differently, and i felt slightly that the speech, whatever carlos says here, what we gave him needed to—we don't want to reference that because it has nothing to do with the movie, it's much too big a topic to cram into this movie, but somehow the attitude, the feeling had changed and so we needed to somehow rewrite the scene" & 3) carlos originally did his monologue in english, but inspired by sergio saying his monologue in italian, his speech was rewritten in (mexican) spanish (fyi, the conclave screenplay available online already reflects the version of the speech carlos says in the movie, so it's uncertain exactly what was rewritten in the reshoot, apart from the language shift)

- the scene immediately after carlos' monologue, the cardinals gathering and nuns walking in the courtyard, was another addition thanks to the leftover money, and was put in to allow vincent's speech to sink in

- the overhead shot of the cardinals under the umbrellas was shot with around 30 actors, duplicated in post-production, because they didn't have enough extras

- some digital assets from the young pope were licensed and used in the film (probably the CG parts of the sistine chapel?)

- "i love the crack in the glasses of john ... by the way, it might even be his idea just to, at least the sitting, that he stay seated, that he sort of, this broken man, that's definitely john's idea" (during the cardinals' standing ovation for vincent)

- the first shot they shot in the movie was the wide shot of thomas and ray, silhouetted by the windows

- "i'm very glad we put the wound [on ralph] afterwards for the next scenes [after they shot the first scene, where they didn't put the wound makeup on ralph yet], it gives him a sort of vulnerability and a certain physicality also of the attack"

- edward has some really great commentary about carlos in vincent and thomas' room of tears scene, about him standing his ground with veteran actors, the rehearsal being on a sunday of just carlos and ralph in a room going over and talking about each line, "it was important for me that you look into his [carlos'] face while he says his lines, and you believe the past that he is telling you, but ... you don't also see it from the beginning that you look at him and, go, like, oh, yeah, i mean, there's something more complex to this character. he needed to be just a normal guy, just one of us. but when he tells his story you kinda look at him, oh yeah i can imagine, that makes sense. and it was only carlos that was able to do that"

- according to edward, ralph's face (while he carried the turtle back to the pond) was more interesting than showing the white smoke

#conclave #conclave (2024)#edward berger

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