John Krasinski Breaks Down A Quiet Place's Lantern Scene

Hey, I'm John Krasinski and these are

Notes on a Scene from A Quiet Place.

(tense music)

(glass shattering)

John Krasinski's not the name you would think of as like,

Can't wait to do a horror movie by that guy.

And the reason why is because

I wouldn't think that either until I read this script

originally by these amazing writers, Beck and Woods

and they had this incredible idea of a family

that had to live quietly or else they would die,

and to me this whole movie's about family.

It is not a horror movie.

I mean, it is a horror movie but to me,

the theme of family and what would you really do

for your kids is the reason why I did the movie.

So this is one of my favorite scenes.

Because it's a movie about a family

that needs to remain quiet this is such a perfect atmosphere

and one of the best scenes to tell the rules

of how to remain quiet and what happens if you don't.

These Monopoly pieces, we thought of for a long time.

You can see we kept the same colors.

These reds are still hotels but

they're fluff balls from a craft store.

The kids, because of the mother being such a loving mother,

she wants them to feel that they have a normal existence

even though they have anything but

and all the pieces are obviously things from

her crafts or sewing kit or something like that

so that the kids can play but not make noise.

We knew that sound would not only be a main character

but it would be the character.

It's actually the thing that frames

the entire movie together,

but more than that it became about adhering to rules.

What sounds literally that the audience hears

are too dangerous, which ones aren't.

It's impossible to live silently and we knew that

so we wanted to bring the audience through this idea

of living as quietly as possible.

This is that old theory of loading a gun

at the beginning of the scene to build tension

and this lantern will obviously become

a huge part of the scene in that

it is the first major noise you hear.

As an audience you've been given this entire

field of information of how this family

is living and why they're living that way,

but the one thing you haven't gotten yet

is what happens if they do make a sound

and so one of the first big noises

in the movie will be from this lantern.

(glass shatters)

This is a live fire which, let's be honest,

probably not the smartest thing to do around children

but Noah made it clear that he wanted to do it.

He wanted to be a part of it

and keep it real 'cause he understood

what we were trying to do with the movie.

That if we cut away to a stunt person

or did it in post it wouldn't feel as real and authentic.

This was a last-minute idea I actually had.

The noise he was supposed to make was just a noise.

The fire aspect of it I thought was

so much more interesting because

the barn is so warm but also looks like a giant tinderbox

and adds more tension, but it was one of those things

that when it hit it was so perfect because

my character runs over and puts it out

and it was all live, so this take actually happened

completely live on two different cameras

so that we could capture that feeling of tension.

This is like a stunt for our movie.

We weren't flying through the sky

or doing any of the bigger-budget movie stuff.

These tiny moments, these tiny stunts

actually feel even more tense because they're real.

They believable, you can feel like it's happening to you.

We wanted the movie to feel really beautiful

and really kinda like a western.

We were looking at movies, obviously the Terrence Malick

movies like Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line.

Also, we shot on film.

The reason why we shot on film was two reasons:

one, it plays with light really well.

Light is really beautiful in film

and when it's not so high-def you can actually play

with how dark the corners are and this mystery and tension.

We also wanted to make the audience feel

like they were a part of this.

This idea of shooting on a farm was very important to us.

When I was doing the re-write,

the idea of farm and isolation was a big deal

because if you can't see their way out

then you feel as trapped as the family does too.

Set design was huge on this movie.

Not only because it's so beautiful

and our production designer Jeff Beecroft did an amazing job

but he and I realized that all the information

that you're gonna be able to give to the audience

because you don't have words to do it, will be in the sets.

For instance, the family photos that we have put up.

Again, Emily's character being all about thriving

and a real childhood for these kids

wanted to create a home so that they didn't feel

that they were living in a bunker.

She puts up pictures, she lights candles.

Even though this has no utility

she puts blankets to make it feel warm

and that these hay bales that are now couches,

she's just trying so desperately

for these kids to feel like they're living

in a special existence rather than a nightmare

which is what they really are living in.

This is an actual old barn

from Upstate New York in Pawling.

I also love this idea that Emily still gardened

'cause it's a quiet activity.

All these herbs and spices and things

are all hers that she grows in the garden next door.

All those little details were really important.

Millie is actually Deaf in real life

and it was non-negotiable for me

to cast a Deaf actress because the character is Deaf.

Not only for the incredibly layered

and more honest performance and she's

living through it every day, but also I needed a guide.

I needed someone to walk me through what it was like

to be the only Deaf person in a hearing family.

Do you get frustrated?

Do you feel empowered?

All these different things, and she was incredibly

generous and so amazing to have on set.

What we do in the movie when you're with Millie

in her perspective is we actually take sound out.

You'll see that she's wearing

a hearing aid throughout the whole movie

and when we see the hearing aid from behind

we start to take sound out and go into her perspective,

and where that came from was actually

a conversation I had with Millie and her mother.

This idea that we're in her world

and that you actually give the audience the perspective

of what it is to be Deaf in her world.

You have all these crazy things happening around her

with the family, with the creatures

and all these other tense moments

and yet when we cut to her perspective like this

we pulled sound out of the movie

and it was so much fun to play around with that.

Without dialogue, the biggest fear I had was

that without dialogue we wouldn't

be able to have pace and tension because dialogue's

actually the thing you're usually cutting and editing.

These kids' performance without dialogue

were so unbelievably pure and honest

and so the tension in the room

has a lot to do with the looks on their faces.

You really believe that these kids are in peril.

You really believe that this situation is real,

and I owe so much of that to the performances of these kids.

We had actually just had our second daughter

three weeks before I read the first script,

and so I was a wide open vessel of tension,

fear and all the other things that new parents go through.

To me this idea of family was what made the movie special,

and then the scares come hopefully

because you really don't wanna see anything

happen to this family that you love.

(creature screeches)