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Robin Hood Interv From JoBlo.com

Don’t know if you got to check out Robin Hood this weekend…or as they’re calling it, “Gladiator in Tights”.  But, it does help if you completely flush out any trace of Costner’s “Prince of Thieves” version and cleanse your film palate before you see this new one or else you will end up being as confused as I was for the first half hour or so.  Also, if your only Robin Hood reference is the Disney version where the fox is Robin Hood and Richard the Lionheart is actually a lion?  Yeah, flush that too.

Personally, I gave the film a B-minus.  I’m a big Ridley Scott fan, but it almost felt as if he had phoned this one in.

Interestingly enough, however, I came across an interview with Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe by JimmyO for JoBlo.com which had some fascinating behind-the-scenes info in it.  For one, the interviewer really knew his stuff, but for two, you had these two film experts, Scott and Crowe, kinda playing off each other’s answers which took the interv to a whole new, deeper level.

Good stuff here, especially this part where they’re discussing the use of 5 or 6 cameras to cover a scene.

(EXCERPT)  Now we were talking to some of the other actors in the film, and the way that you shot this picture, you would have a bunch of cameras out there, and they would be acting in the world. Would the new 3D system allow you to do that…?

RS: Not with absolute freedom, but I was told you can’t do that with 2D cameras either and we do. And he’s [to Russell] an expert at knowing where every f*ing camera is…so you go, da, da, da, da, and he knows exactly where the ninth camera is. Whereas, an actor that… say Bill Hurt saying, ‘I don’t know where…’

RC: He’s talking specifically about a conversation that I had with William. At the end of one day, he was very morose and sitting in his trailer and all the merry men are sitting around having a beer together, and I said, ‘Come on…’ and he said, ‘Ah no, I just can’t, I don’t understand what’s going on. I’m out there, I’m doing my thing and not once did Ridley cover me in a close-up and I don’t understand… I mean, isn’t this an important part of the story?’, and I said, ‘Bill, we had five cameras going. And with five cameras, we did four takes. Between each take, they changed the lens and changed the way a particular camera moved. I absolutely, guarantee you, he’s got more close-ups than you can shake a stick at.’ He said, ‘Is that how he works?’ ‘That’s how he works. Did he interrupt you? Did he stop you from doing anything? No. When you’re not doing what he wants, that’s when he’ll come and talk to you.’

RS: And also it’s a preference or a choice for an actor from one actor to another, as to what do you prefer. Do you prefer to know where the camera is? Or do you prefer just to forget about it?

RC: Me, I like to live in the world.

RS: Yeah. So you don’t have to worry about it.

RC: Yeah. The thing is, I spend all the time I need during a rehearsal situation. I have a look at where they are and I go and ask them what lens they have on. And I’ll do that between each take. So if you are changing, what are you changing with… so I have a pretty good idea what he’s going to get given the set of tracks that are laid down. But I also have that thing where – this comes from growing up out of smaller films – you don’t want to waste an inch of footage so you don’t want to be the guy whose back is to the camera in the emotional part of the movie. So you have to be aware of the camera movement and what the camera is doing. So this is just in a much more fluid sense when you’re on set with Ridley.

RS: You know, I came to it through watching actors get frustrated when you do a take, and you are the actor helping off camera, and I’m saying save it. Except you’re not saving it, he’s actually giving it to him and so the time I’m done here, I come back to him and he’s done, he’s cooked. So that started to drive me crazy so I started with two cameras. And once you do that, you realize, hey, you can put four or six cameras in here if you know where to put them. Because if you regard each shot sequence as a play, then you are covering maybe a minute and a half or two minutes. It’s better for the actor who is acting though the play without the stop and go of individual takes.

RC: And everything that happens in front of those six cameras is mathematically related.

RS: Sure.

RC: So it’s easier to cut. You know, I first had that experience prior to working with Ridley with Michael Mann working with Al Pacino. Michael just decided that he was gonna run two cameras on everything. Because I like to work in the first three takes and Al kind of uses the first thirty to warm up. [Laughing] So Michael just decided he was going to get everything. So that… also because of the way I work with Ridley, when I’m on another film and somebody goes back to a single camera or whatever, that I still make sure that the energy is high off camera. So you’re driving it out, so you don’t have this thing where you drop down. Quite often, you have chats with the other actors who believe that their job only starts when they’re on camera. And its’ like no, actually you have to work on the other side of the camera at the same time.

RS: There’s nothing worse than saying to an actor, we’ll be ready in forty-five minutes, and he goes round back to the trailer going, ‘F*!’ when you just got going, you don’t want to stop. It’s death, death, death.

RC: The thing is, the assumption would be that going from one camera to six cameras, adds a lot of money. But what you are talking about is being able to achieve more in any given hour of the day. So you can actually… you take your six cameras and yes, functionally, you have X more of dollar costs with multiple six cameras. But that multiple of six counts in your favor, of everything that you shoot. Now we were doing a little comedy in the South of France. And the crew, after a few days, went to the producer saying, [In a French dialect] ‘I don’t know what this man is doing. He is going to kill us. We are doing seventy set ups before lunch time. This is supposed to be a little comedy.’ [Laughing] But that’s just the way he likes to work. That’s just the way I like to work.

Read the FULL ARTICLE at JoBlo.com.

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