Batman with Robert Pattinson: Where did the film come from?

Tim Burton mostly chose to shoot in a studio that better contained his painted kits and buildings from an annoying angle. Christopher Nolan, for his part, favored the streets of Chicago as much as possible. When a new director takes on Batman, his superhero approach is also felt in his vision for Gotham City.

Like the father of the Dark Knight trilogy, Matt Reeves presents a realistic (but still very graphic) version of the Dark Knight Town, some of which we explore. Never has Gotham looked so alive in the movies as in Batman, to the point that he looks like a character that the protagonist has to confront.

This feeling of sinking is all the more impressive when you know that very few natural settings are used in the film. Much less than expected, as the team told us last December.

Robert Pattinson (Bruce Wayne / Batman): 90% of the film was shot in the studio, but the set was incredibly impressive. About eight city blocks were built at Leavesden Studios in Gotham City , And it is almost impossible to know if you are not told. Especially since there was a railway line and lots of other similar things.

It was a very, very complete set. Very well cut. You will find it hard to believe that these are studio series when you watch the movie. But still it is so. So much so that the members of the tech group, who were English, began to speak with an American accent because we felt as if we were on Gotham High Street. (Laughs) But it’s so much easier to work with: you go to the shooting range and you don’t have to imagine the series. There were very few green foundations and we also had this new technology.

90% of the film is shot in the studio and you will find it hard to believe when you see the film (Robert Pattinson)

Zoe Kravitz (Selina Kyle / Female Cat): LED screens! It was our cinematographer Graig Fraser who invented this technology Mandalorian in the Star Wars series. And it was amazing. Our hardest part as actors is looking at the green screen and showing it that one thing is another. It takes a lot of energy to make something happen when it is not. You even feel a little silly and it almost stops you.

Robert and I share the scene on the rooftops of Gotham City at sunset. It was the sight and the feeling and the light of the city … My God! I was very grateful for that because it really allows us to focus on what was happening on an emotional level instead of thinking. “You are facing a skyscraper, there is a skyscraper in front of you” (laughs) We almost forget the effect of light on us, so much so that every detail, like birds, is unimaginable. This made the movie world more real.

Preview the shot with these screens on which the Gotham Horizon is projected:

John Turturro (Carmin Falcone): When I look out the window of an office or hiding place, seeing all these predictions that looked so realistic impressed me. I have never been on a shooting range like this. I was on a lot of shooting stages and I thought it would be easy for me to imagine the world on the set. But it was impressive.

Peter Sarsgard (Gill Colson): There are massive kits and walking to the cathedral is something. But what changes everything is when you step up and discover the level of small details in such a big case. Everything is done very nicely and with great precision. It was inspiring, all the time.

Matt Reeves (Director, co-author): I wanted to make people believe what is happening on screen. And I always tried to use as many practical effects as possible. On the planet of the monkeys, we made sure to take out the cameras, shoot in places where motion was not used: on the first Everything was very staged with cinematic lighting so I wanted natural light and we went to the forest.

This added to the level of reality, even though, of course, there were no monkeys there. But there were a lot of real things in the frame. And that’s the approach I tried to use here, as I did in Cloverfield, where the basis of everything was real, even if something virtual was in the shot. This allowed us to have a reference.

I wanted to make people believe what was happening on screen (Matt Reeves)

Dylan Clark (Producer): The way we shot was the same as on the planet of the monkeys. We don’t just like being in sets. We also like to be in the physical space, outside. And that was our initial plan here: we shot in Liverpool, around London, in Chicago … and it got even more complicated when Covid spread. For security reasons we could not take the whole team to these places because we did not know how to restrain everything. So, we come up with ideas, and to see them flush it out, it’s really fun.

And we did more studios after the filming break. We filmed from January to March 2020, then updated in August of the same year, changing some of the methodologies. Luckily, we had an incredibly creative team and our actors are amazing. Solving the smallest problem on the set is a task that is generally assigned to a certain number of people. Before Kovida, all these people met on the set to find a way out. With the pandemic, that has changed.

We were able to achieve that, but it was harder. The more we had to isolate ourselves, the more often communication took place through headphones. And we are social people by nature, so we usually get together, shake each other and solve problems. It was harder to do this in our tents, in isolation, but we had to go through it because, in the end, we had to make sure the environment was safe enough for the actors to take off their masks and get lost in them. Relevant characters, without thinking about illness.

Does Batman’s team continue the same sequel that has a very good chance of seeing the light of day? Or will he come back further out? Answer me soon.

Interview with Maximilian Pierrett in Paris, December 6, 2021

“Batman” by Matt Reeves: