The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Creators Break Down the Carriage Chase Scene

Hi, my name is Louis Leterrier and I am the director

of Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

I'm Lisa Henson, I'm the executive producer

of Age of Resistance.

And we're going to do a one-scene breakdown

of the carriage chase in episode five.

[intense music]

[screaming]

Thank you, it's good to see you, Rian!

Ah, no!

You know, we've been wanting to go back to the world

of the Dark Crystal for many years.

It's been so important to me to kinda get back to this

really rich fantasy world that my father created

with Frank Oz and with Brian Froud.

They created a world that was bigger than ever made it

into that film, so we just thought there were more stories

to tell and a broader canvas to see, and it's just been,

it's been a big passion project for me.

[dark music]

All these shots actually, I went on the internet

and found all these shots, 4K drone shots,

and we just purchased them, so there's a lot of people

that just shot stuff on drones and we just added

the carriage, three suns in the sky, but all these shots,

every single one of our aerial shot is amateur-shot, found

on internet, and then we purchase them, and then people

are all like, I see reactions like oh my god,

I remember shooting this thing, in then it's on [mumbles]

so people are really excited about the idea

of being part of Dark Crystal.

All Gelfling are in danger.

Rian must confess to murder of Mira.

Stand with Skesis and silence whispers of rebellion.

The Chamberlain, he's a well-known character

from the original movie, and he was a sneaky,

traitorous kind of Machiavellian character,

so he's captured Rian and is planning

to take him back to the castle, make him falsely confess

to a murder, and of course, Rian doesn't want

to participate in that.

We're not your pets.

False; you live only if you try.

The choice is pets or enemies.

Choose wisely.

You can see Rian slowly being worn down by Chamberlain

who uses every technique just to get the truth out of him.

[carriage rumbles]

What's that?

Oh! Ah!

Gravity is gravity, so puppet hair, if the hair goes down

you cannot reverse it, so you have actually

to puppeteer upside down, so we built a platform

where our puppeteer was laying on for hours at a time,

he's very uncomfortable with his arm upside down,

so you have to imagine all the blood is going down--

Gergin is a remarkably heavy puppet.

[Louis] Yeah, that's actually on stage.

This is a green screen behind, or blue screen,

and we just added the background, but everything

in this picture is real.

[Chamberlain screams] Hey Rian!

Naia! It's time to go!

So long! [Chamberlain screams]

Every insert is the most complicated shot

of the show, puppets really can't grab anything

or pick up a drop or do anything, so it would be a waste

of time to have our massive crew shoot that, so we had

a little cleanup unit that we called the shadow unit

which followed us and which just said, all right,

I just need the two hands to grab each other

and that will take you half of the day to shoot that stuff.

Inserts are so important because they really are indicating

all the details, and I think especially in very detailed

action sequences when there's a lot of stuff happening,

first of all it's good to take your time and see

what the people are doing, but also it helps change the size

of the shots, 'cause you don't want to do just

massive wide shots all the time, it gets boring,

and it's nice to just go a little tighter,

go a little punchier and go for, you know,

just the micro micro stuff, it makes it a little bit

more dynamic and more exciting.

[puppets screaming]

Obviously, puppets, no legs.

Here he has legs, so what we had, we had a stunt Rian,

she was a head-to-toe Rian to do all these wide shots

of him 'cause I didn't want to go CG for this,

because I wanted to keep it as real as possible,

so for all these shots when you see his legs,

it's all real puppets, you just erase, possibly,

a puppeteer or a cable or a rod,

just to make it work much smoother.

[Chamberlain yells]

What's completely different from the original movie

is the use of CG to accentuate some features

of our puppets: the tongues on the Skeksis,

that's something that actually I wanted--

You dreamed of it.

I dreamed of it-- We said we'll give you

five shots, and then we did, I don't know, several hundred.

[Louis] Yeah, several hundred, so yeah--

And this is kind of shot is was designed for, for sure.

'Cause you're looking right in the mouth.

That's the typical shot, obviously the tongue is CG,

but you have to redesign, you have to recreate

the entire mouth CG in order to put the tongue in,

so there's some spittle sometime and then the tongue

that actually is very funny, and everything else

his eye, everything else is absolutely real.

I think one of the things that make action sequences great

is when they're shot dirty, you know, I love having stuff

hit the lens, whether it's debris or light, it makes

all the effects tie together, so the depth of field is

a little bit more real, everything is more real,

so you'll see there's lots of specks of dirt, stuff hitting

the lens, being pushed, smudging the lens--

At you, Gergin.

[Chamberlain screams]

[puppets scream]

What you have to understand is that you have

your puppeteer basically in green right here

and inside the head and the mouth of this puppet,

that was Dave Chapman playing Gergin,

he's actually right here looking at a monitor of frame

and he's dressed in green with a green hoodie,

it's extremely hot, the other guys were hiding

and that blade is actually CG, that's a good example

of how we erase the puppeteers.

[puppets scream]

Using digital technology to put stuff together,

but all these lens flares were flares that we shot

against a black background on our lenses,

and we added onto our picture.

[puppets scream]

On a sequence like this, we were using so many

assistant puppeteers; I think I've concluded that we used

pretty much every puppeteer in England,

at least for a couple days.

[puppets scream]

[carriage rumbles]

I don't think anybody's ever tried

to do action like this with puppets, this was all you.

And I know why. [laughs]

Are you hurt?

No, we're fine!

With a typical sort of like, long lens,

rack focusing from one character to the next, and actually

it's quite a big distance, you know, so it's like

a big rack focus just to go from one to the next, you know,

and that's a long, long lens, I think this was like

300 millimeter, maybe with a doubler, so that's 600

in anamorphic, so flares, long lensing, adding some

bumps, camera bumps just adds a lot of life and dynamism.

[carriage rumbles]

Unhook the Armaligs, they'll carry us to safety!

[Gergin yells]

That's something I love about this shot

is actually the sound, Tim Nielsen from Skywalker Sound

who was our sound designer, sound mixer,

I did this sort of like, [mimics train] like train track

kind of like-- [carriage rumbles]

Yeah. And it's funny, it's like

a train sound and I love it.

[Gergin] [moans] Come on!

Rian's plan is to unhook the wheels, because the wheels

are sentient creatures called the Armaligs, and we fell

in love with them and then design as I can see--

But they're really big, they are the only creature

that we don't have a puppet of it, so when people

are watching and they think, oh the Armaligs might

be CG they actually are CG in every shot because

of the scale of them.

[carriage rumbles]

No, come back [screams]!

But also, Louis was operating an operating steady cam,

so he was personally responsible for framing

out the puppeteers' heads, and you had to think

about that while you were shooting and directing.

Yeah, but then ultimately, we all work together,

'cause one thing that's different with an actor, an actor

will never see a video monitor of their performance,

a puppeteer always checks their performance and the picture

so they can always control the image and work for the camera

and work with the camera, so it's a nice dance, we always

dance around each other, and that's actually something

that we added to what puppet movies and puppet shows

had done before, it's like, a lot of camera movements

were shaky and bumpy and kind of like, you know,

loose I guess, you know, I actually was hitting my camera

and I was asking people to hit me as I was operating,

'cause that's the way you would, I've shot a lot

of car chases, you get bumped around and you have

a hard time operating, that's what I wanted, because

what you have to understand, we were

on a green screen stage, nothing was moving,

it was pretty simple, and we went shot by shot

around the carriage doing sequence by sequence--

I love watching the grip hold on to you while

you're working, because we were always shooting

on platforms and Louis was up on the platform doing

the steady cam and he had to be held sometimes just

to make sure he didn't fall off the platform.

Oh, not good, not good!

Join the guard, they said!

Nothing ever goes wrong with the castle, they said.

[Chamberlain yells]

So everything is anchored around Chamberlain

in his position, but really it's like a mix

between Rian's position and Chamberlain's position,

so if Rian's on the left of the carriage moving right

to left, and if Rian then moves to the other side

of the carriage moving left to right,

nothing is a machine. Very few straight lines

and right angles, like we almost, I don't think we have a

single right angle the whole time.

So everything is made by hand, even in the Skeksis world,

and everything is a dead creature, it's a little bit

of a creature so it looks like a little dinosaur head

at the front, and that could have been repurposed

Frankenstein carcass of an animal that they add plasma

to and it then becomes a machine.

Nothing is something that they build.

Come on, come on!

[puppets grunt]

This was real, you know, this is like somebody actually

was, Ollie Taylor was the feet on that shot, and it was

very good-- I love that you can remember

exactly who was doing the foot.

Because everybody has a specialty, everybody's

very skilled at something, everybody's like, you know,

he had a great aim.

[intense music]

[puppets yelling]

Go!

[carriage rumbles]

[Chamberlain screams]

[carriage breaks apart]

When we say this in Daily's and it was just him surrounded

by green, I found it very emotional, even with not

the background filled in, I was like, he was looking

and he was free.

The detail of these puppets, at first I was actually

mindful of not shooting the puppets too closely,

or in extreme close-up in extreme lighting

on slow-mo and everything, and then the more I shot them

I realized that they were absolutely stunning and we went

tighter and tighter and closer and closer and closer.

Their eyes are so expressive, I mean that's the thing,

that's the beauty of the handsome puppets, everything,

you can just shoot them and you have something amazing

all the time.

[carriage rumbles]

[Chamberlain screams]

Chamberlain inside the washing machine, that's me

with a handheld camera rotating the camera,

basically sort of like, I have one--

Is it, it's this.

Yeah exactly, so I have my camera, and I'm rotating it

like I'm juggling it and then [mumbles]

and it looks cool, you know. [Chamberlain screams]

It's just like, the dirty you shoot this stuff,

the better it is, that's what I learned

when doing all my action movies, just basically

if somebody goes down a hill just throw the camera

with them, you'll get something good out of it.

[laughs] Yes! Woo!

The plate is real, they're all real, the camera movement

is real, the only thing that's not real are the Armaligs

and then some of the debris, but like--

This is a pretty incredible shot

to think this was done real.

They were static, the camera was moving,

and Rian on this thing was on a big dolly train track,

a long train track, they were tracking with him

on this train track with people pushing him

and puppeteers on top of the train track, we use a lot

of that stuff, it's kind of like, sometimes you can move

the stool to the piano, and sometimes you have

to move the piano to the stool.

[puppets scream]

Well, that was fun!

I wanted that moment, that moment of celebration,

I wanted them to sort of like look at each other

and be like, holy crap, we did it!

Like it's the first, you have to understand,

the Gelfling, they are not a fighting people.

They have never done this sort of like, big fights,

especially these three.

Well the whole series is really about the Gelfling

coming together and kind of swallowing their differences

and actually working as a team, and this scene is the one

where they're most literally coming together

as a team and they couldn't do it without each other.