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  • every day in production is a crazy day of production.

  • If you have these many hours, you need these many hours.

  • You're always fighting the amount of hours, the light of the day, the amount of strength that you have to push the boulder up the road.

  • Once we got out to kind of Louisiana in the summer time, toward the end of the schedule, things got a little crazier.

  • It was really hot and humid, and we were doing a lot of work outside.

  • Well, you don't see on screen is that they're doing it in 100 degree heat with 70% humidity and cicadas buzzing every other scene.

  • I am Victoria Alonso.

  • I'm John from Schwartz, and this is how you make a Marvel blockbuster.

  • When we think about kind of the way that the Marvel slate comes together, it happens on a series of what we call it creative retreats, where Kevin and Victoria and Lewis and some of the other producers and executives go out to a house in Palm Springs and sort of talk about the next few years and what those movies they're gonna be talk through movies that Aaron production or in development and talk about the future and sort of who's gonna do what.

  • And I think that one of those retreats, it became really clear that Captain Marvel was gonna be a big target for us.

  • And very soon after that, Kevin's announcement made it official.

  • Theo Secret to our success is to go to Palm Springs when it's 125 degrees so we can boil our stories boiler ideas and never go outside stands handwork.

  • There's an original conversation of, like these other characters that we have going on coming in the next year or two, and these are the ones that we wish to have.

  • How do we?

  • We've all of that within this huge tapestry that we have that is interconnected.

  • The birth of it happens, usually in Kevin's mind.

  • Quite early.

  • All of our movies really start with character before there's theme before there's action before their structure.

  • Before there's plot, there's a character who's gonna be the core of the movie, and in order to make the movie work, the character has to work, so that doesn't work.

  • The movie doesn't work, and with Carol, there was a really unique combination of her toughness and her humanity and her sense of humor and her Air Force background on all of these elements.

  • Specifically from Kelly sues comic books that made her seem like the next Marvel superhero went through all of this publishing history and said, This is the version of the character that is going to resonate.

  • You have the origin story that you want to tell about that character, and then you have the universality of that character for what is our audience.

  • We all have a one point or another, an identity crisis.

  • We're all told that we are weak and we don't belong, and that were too emotional.

  • And no, that's not gonna work.

  • At the end of the day, the global message of this movie Listen, my point of view is listen to your voice, listen to who you are because you know who you are.

  • And that voice is the voice that is going to pull you forward and lift you.

  • My name is Carol.

  • Every movie has a creative producer attached to it.

  • Jonathan being one of them, someone that watches every single bit of it from the beginning to the end, sometimes is their vision alongside the director's sometimes is their pitch that they come in and they say, Hey, I think that of all the characters that we have with the 6000 this one particular character has a place in our universe.

  • So these are the people that make it work.

  • Then we bring it to our creative group off all the other producers that do all the other movies, which is not many.

  • That's an additional five or six, and there's junior creatives as well.

  • You may have seen that parliament credit pop up on a few of the recent movies.

  • This is part of the work that that Parliament group does.

  • Finding the right writers is a difficult task, and there's nobody better than this man.

  • You know, it's different every time.

  • I think for this one in particular, the first writers on the project where Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve Nicole obviously knew really well from the marble writer's program and also from her work on guardians, the Galaxy, Volume one.

  • So we knew that she had kind of a great year for science fiction and that she really identified and understood sort of what made Carol Tech.

  • We had also had meetings with Meg would sort of come from the Pixar World and done some really interesting work with them.

  • Meg really sort of felt like she understood the voice of the character in a great way, and so we sort of did something on this one that we've never did before.

  • Which is, which is pair up two writers who had previously been a writing team that both came at it from sort of very different perspectives.

  • And both of those perspectives ended up being really essential to those early days of kind of development.

  • Typically, you sit in a room with index cards, cargo of you, nice cars go down.

  • It's a lot of breaking and breaking and breaking story before we ever get to that draft, because by the time you're in sort of draft world, we've already beaten out various versions of the movie, which which will never see the light of day but are important roads to go down so you can find the right one.

  • One of the things that we do that is very much a marvel thing that is plus ing, which means like there is a draft and there's another draft and there's a shooting draft and there's revisions to that draft.

  • And then we go into edit and we keep on redefining and we keep in re sculpting.

  • And then just when you can do anything because time has taken it away, you could still do it on a d.

  • R.

  • So you're still writing.

  • So now we're going into the booth and we have those three words that maybe that is what helps you to get the finish line on that scene so it never ends.

  • It doesn't is not just one draft or two or 27.

  • It doesn't end until the movies that in the world we started thinking about caste relatively early in the process on this one, which I think was driven mostly by endgame in some ways because we knew the end game is coming up and that movie was gonna shoot before Captain Marvel did.

  • We were shooting Infinity War an end game at the same time as a whole, which is something we've never done.

  • Captain Marvel was going to be introduced in Infinity War.

  • It's a symbol.

  • And then she was gonna have her scene in endgame, so we had to do the thinking quite early as mega Nicole were often working.

  • I think we sort of had a good foundation for the character under us, and we knew that she would need to be tough and fun and vulnerable and human and superhuman.

  • So sorry and Bree really felt like the right person to do all of those things.

  • And then we started talking, and then we did.

  • The big announcement at Comic Con, which was one of the happiest days of my life are thinking about directors starts quite early at the same time that we're talking about writers.

  • Jonathan is presenting directors to us or where he's talking to them, interviewing them, looking at their work, and some of them are coming to talk to you.

  • Kevin and myself were looking for something different every time, talking to as many people as you can and being willing to be surprised.

  • I think we're always looking for directors who are passionate about these movies and storytellers who we believe in in terms of their vision and sort of take that they come up with what they want to do with the movie and whose body of work lets us know in some way that we can have confidence in their ability to execute it.

  • And Ryan and Anna very quickly, I think, rose to the top of that pack just in terms of all of those things.

  • They really understood the character in a great way, and their body of work certainly is all about taking characters you wouldn't expect and making them the center of these amazing films that explore those characters and great ways.

  • You know, they convince us very quickly that they're the right.

  • People sort of do that for Captain Marvel, and eventually they sort of come to the table with a more robust take with visuals and references from other movies.

  • You always kind of looking for that shared cinematic language like talk about movies in the same way, and not that your taste necessarily need to align, but at least like you sort of have that kind of shared background to fall back on.

  • And I felt like we definitely had that with those two mega.

  • Nicole got the ball a long way down the field and learned a lot through that process, and they were incredibly helpful.

  • That movie would exist without him at its certain point, you know, they left the project.

  • Ryan and Annie had come aboard by then, we sort of knew we needed someone else to kind of pick up the ball in terms of the writing and settled very quickly.

  • I think on Geneva, if there is a switch at some point or somebody comes in to help is because we need another voice, not because the voice that we had before was not good.

  • That voice gave us all they had, and now we need an additional voice.

  • So thus we got a different writer, and that led to many months of sitting in a room with Geneva and Ryan and Anna and Mary.

  • Lou knows who was on the movie at the time, just sculpting and sculpting away based on the story.

  • The green light is when we're doing it.

  • As long as we tell our parent company this is what we're doing, we're doing it.

  • We have an incredibly successful relationship with the Disney folks, and in partnership with them, we just go forward and off we go.

  • And I think it's really like part of the strength of the marble processes, you know, the movies coming out.

  • You know what's happening, and you're able to run full speed toward a goal.

  • You don't have to go through a long process of convincing people that all your moves are right.

  • And it also creates a lot of stress because you don't have a lot of time.

  • You have to make Citrus quickly.

  • You have to go, and it forces you to sort of lock yourself into something creatively.

  • But you do have to run at full speed for a very long time.

  • We have enough that we're ready to shoot.

  • But we don't have everything ready all the time.

  • I'm gonna put it to you in construction metaphor.

  • You ready?

  • We know the address of the house.

  • We know it's a house and not a condominium.

  • We know the house has three bathrooms and four bedrooms where the bathrooms are, or the bedrooms heart.

  • That is a shift of livent.

  • We know we have a roof, whether shingle or is not who knows.

  • We know certain things and we will start building.

  • But there is a lot of freedom into whether the garden is in the front or in the back.

  • So you may have your friend long become your back long.

  • Everyone that comes to work with us has that kind of collaboration and freedom of creativity.

  • But we do keep it quite loose in order to find the best story.

  • And depending on how the structure of the movie was being shifted and some of these rooms were being shifted alongside in this house, it started to feel like it was man bashing.

  • So we were really, really militant about not doing that, because the consequence of that is that people will see it as such and not see the truth of the birth of this phenomenal character were pretty harsh with each other about that comment.

  • And that's another way that sort of the parliament is able to be really helpful because we all sort of help each other and look at each other's work and reach other scripts and are able to say this meets the marble standard or this does not.

  • Jonathan and the directors have absolute creative control while they're shooting.

  • And then Lou, Kevin and I watch it from the sidelines were usually prepping to projects and finishing posting three or two.

  • There's always multiple projects that are happening at home.

  • But Jonathan is steering the ship alongside with the directors, of course, but then, sometimes we do have writers that are on set.

  • The movie works best when it flows from the directors, and on this movie, it really did.

  • They really had a control over the set.

  • They had a command over the story.

  • And even though it's it's tough because it was a much bigger movie than they had ever undertaken before.

  • They really understood the bones of it in a great way.

  • We had a great team with us, many of whom had done several other Marvel films and sort of knew the drill padding.

  • Which our line producer, Lars Winther, our first a.

  • D.

  • Who's there to kind of marshal the troops?

  • Chris Townsend, our visual effects supervisor who's done several these movies now and knows how to make them feel like Marvel movies.

  • But Marvel movies through the eye of these particular filmmakers.

  • Ben Davis has been with us for many, many movies.

  • That is the best.

  • We had two great editors and Debbie Berman and Elliot Graham, our production tire, and Nicholson having this great team in support of Ryan and Anna, I think, really allow them to go out and do the best work.

  • So we had a lot of the old guard and people that we've worked through many, many of these battles, as we call it in the battle zone of shooting.

  • That was one of the things about the directors.

  • All you have to worry about is that performance.

  • Everything else is happening because you have the greatest of greatest behind you part of the process.

  • Also, supporting directors is making sure that we prepare adequately because that prep period is essential.

  • And one of the tools that we use in prep is the storyboard.

  • In previous process, we had Brian Andrews, 20 laboratory there in Dillinger and Recode Allesandro, who all drew various sequences.

  • And those boards sort of got turned into into previous that Ryan and oversee sort of.

  • Let them understand before they step on set.

  • What shots do they need?

  • What angle to get on and communicate to the crew?

  • Everything about how the day is gonna go.

  • The important thing about our movies, too, is to have the shorthand to know.

  • Remember what we did on of interest one.

  • Okay, we're not doing that.

  • We're doing this.

  • It's also very successful in the efficiency of time, which is the one thing that we fight really hard and we never win.

  • It's especially helpful when you're pretty deep in when you are storyboarding and pre visiting and prepping and scheduling and writing all at the same time.

  • On all those processes were happening in parallel and shooting and shooting, There's never really a moment where you sort of sit back and say All right now we just have to execute We're constantly in a process of conceiving and improving and executing its evening in improving and executing, and the minute that you shot one frame of film you're posting in our movies were probably posting always about four months before your shooting is we're building things in CG we're creating.

  • Look, Debs were creating the R and D for these worlds that we have to create that take a long time to create.

  • So we are posting before your shooting and when you're shooting your posting money is always a concern, but it should never be the guiding concern.

  • The concern is the creative one of the things that we've learned over the years.

  • This limitation is the mother of all creation.

  • We definitely have come up with great ideas that we didn't have.

  • If it wasn't for the limitation of that moment, Captain Marvel, I think, was our 21st movie.

  • So by now we sort of understand what it takes to make a movie feel like it has the scope that marble meeting movie needs to have.

  • And sometimes it's not as much as you think.

  • You just got to be smarter.

  • This movie, in particular, had a shorter post than we usually.

  • D'oh!

  • This was a 28 week post, and I think we usually like to have a little more time than that.

  • And that just means a lot of six days, a lot of seven days, a lot of consecutive days in the dark Editing bay.

  • And so I give a lot of credit to our editors Dev Burman and Elliot Graham, who really grind it out.

  • We had the very first time that a female composer was a part of this size of movie Pinar.

  • She had to work out of 10 times harder because with 28 weeks, that sort of cheats you from an immense amount of time.

  • When you think about it, we don't do outside of Disney screenings.

  • We have friends and family screenings, which is a group of people that either work for Disney or companies that are under the umbrella.

  • And because we have so many things that people can't talk about, people know so that we don't spoil it for the rest of the world.

  • But we do get input from other folks other than internal folks.

  • So we've sort of gone out to try to find audience members were close enough to us where we know they're not gonna, you know, like everything on the Internet but far enough away where they're gonna give us honest honesty.

  • And I think that the harsh truth this well, we were after and let me tell you, we got it.

  • You know, you screen the movie three or 45 times throughout the course of post production, with a different audience every time, and you learn a lot.

  • You know, I think on this movie we screamed a lot for humor.

  • Whether the jokes worked, we screamed a lot for confusions because the movie is complicated in a lot of ways.

  • wanna make sure the audience was following it.

  • You know, there was just a lot of stuff we wanted to try, and you just sort of need toe to sit there in the room and feel the energy with a real crowd in order to understand whether it's working or not.

  • They're not for the faint of heart, Let me tell you, we tried to warn the directors that this is not Please don't get attached to each and every word.

  • And don't let this moment destroy your spirit.

  • It's a little different for us.

  • I think we been through a few times.

  • All of these movies, believe it or not, are ugly ducklings in one way or another before they become beautiful swans, the audience in every screening I think we ever did put up their hands and said, We want more than nineties more nineties music, more nineties references.

  • We love it.

  • We want more.

  • We know that that's what that friends and family group told us they wanted.

  • But you still have to have that movie out in the world.

  • They still has to open globally, and then you go almost immediately from that process and step out into the light of the premier and it's like what I thought.

  • I just finished this movie yesterday.

  • For me, the premier is pretty stressful because sometimes our actors have seen the film.

  • Sometimes they haven't.

  • Sometimes the crew members that have worked so hard have seen that sometimes they haven't.

  • And then when it goes out to the world, five or six days later is that moment where you just like there were a couple of times during this journey where I feel so proud to be a mother, to be a woman and to be a female producer in times where these stories are very needed.

  • When we finish and I got up, there were these two women and they both with tears in their eyes that were there with their daughters, saying Thank you for having taken the risk.

  • I felt really relieved.

  • So I knew that this movie is gonna mean a lot to a lot of people.

  • That character was really important that that that the movie was making a really bold statement to the world and it felt like we accomplished those things.

  • It felt like we didn't drop the ball on the first female superhero we're gonna put out of the first title.

  • Female Supergirl.

  • We were going to release the true success of who we are, our the partnerships and who were doing this movie with and to be able to create that kind of harmony.

  • That's where I think you see the filmmaking process being lifted.

  • I really like the impact that it seems to make on the culture.

  • You go into a movie and you hope that people are going to see themselves represented on screen.

  • And especially for this one.

  • Women who wanted that kind of part to its current a marble moon who wanted that hero that they could identify with got the most proud moment for me was to be at the premiere with my wife and my little one.

  • She came out running because I'm just so proud that you're my mom.

  • The fact that she, at eight years of age, understood that this was important.

every day in production is a crazy day of production.

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