The talents of two of the world’s
greatest storytellers – Roald Dahl
and Steven Spielberg
– unite for the first
time to bring
Dahl’s beloved classic
“The BFG” to life on screen. Directed
by Spielberg, “The
BFG” tells the imaginative story
of a young
girl and the Giant who introduces her to the wonders and perils of Giant Country.
THE STORY In the middle
of the night,
when every child
and every grown-up
is in a deep, deep
sleep, all the dark things
come out from hiding
and have the world to themselves. That’s
what Sophie, a precocious 10-year-old, has been told,
and that’s what
she believes as she lies
sleepless in her own bed at her London orphanage.
While all the other girls
in the dormitory
dream their dreams,
Sophie risks breaking
one of Mrs.
Clonkers’s many rules
to climb out of her bed, slip
on her glasses,
lean out the window and see what
the world looks
like in the moonlit silence
of the witching
hour. Outside, in the ghostly, silvery
light, her familiar
street looks more
like a fairy
tale village than
the one she knows, and out of the darkness
comes something long
and tall…very, very,
tall. That something
is a giant
who takes Sophie
and whisks her away to his home
in a land
far, far away.
Fortunately for Sophie,
he is the big friendly
giant and nothing
like the other
inhabitants of Giant
Country. Standing 24-feet-tall with
enormous ears and a keen
sense of smell,
the BFG is endearingly dim-witted
and keeps to himself for the most
part. His brothers
are twice as big and at least
twice as scary,
and have been
known to eat humans, but the BFG is a vegetarian and makes do with a disgusting vegetable
called Snozzcumber.
Upon her arrival
in Giant Country,
Sophie is initially
frightened of the mysterious giant,
but soon comes
to realize that
the BFG is actually quite
gentle and charming,
and since she has never
met a giant
before, is full
of questions. The BFG brings Sophie
to Dream Country
where he collects
dreams and sends
them to children,
teaching her all about the magic and mystery of dreams. Having
both been on their own in the world up until now,
an unexpected friendship
blossoms. But Sophie’s
presence in Giant
Country has attracted
the unwanted attention
of the other
giants, who have
become increasingly more
bothersome. Sophie and the BFG soon depart
for London to see the Queen and warn her of the precarious giant
situation, but they
must first convince
her that
giants do indeed
exist. Together, they
come up with
a plan to get rid of the giants once
and for all.
Metropolitan Films, Amblin
Entertainment and Reliance
Entertainment, in association
with Walden Media,
present the fantasy
adventure film “The
BFG,” the first-ever
motion picture adaptation
of Roald Dahl’s
resonant tale of childhood, the magic of dreams and the extraordinary friendship
between a young
girl and a big friendly
giant. Directed by threetime Academy
Award® winner Steven
Spielberg, the film
reunites the director
with his Oscar-nominated collaborator on “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” Melissa
Mathison, who
adapted the childrens
author’s timeless adventure
for the big screen. “The
BFG” is produced
by Spielberg, Frank
Marshall and Sam Mercer with
Kathleen Kennedy, John
Madden, Kristie Macosko
Krieger and Michael
Siegel serving as executive producers.
The film stars
three-time Tony Award®,
two-time Olivier Award
and Oscar® winner
Mark Rylance as the Big Friendly Giant;
newcomer Ruby Barnhill
as Sophie, the orphan who befriends him and is swept into
a world of rampaging giants;
Penelope Wilton as the Queen;
Jemaine Clement as Fleshlumpeater, the most fearsome
giant from Giant
Country; Rebecca Hall
as Mary, the Queen’s handmaid;
Rafe Spall as Mr. Tibbs,
the Queen’s butler;
and Bill Hader
as Bloodbottler, another
unruly giant from
Giant Country.
The creative team
is comprised of some of Spielberg’s longtime
collaborators, including: two-time
Oscar®-winning director of photography Janusz
Kaminski; two-time Oscar-winning production
designer Rick Carter;
three time Oscar-winning editor
Michael Kahn, ACE;
and Oscar-nominated costume
designer Joanna Johnston,
with legendary five-time
Oscar winner John Williams
composing his 24th
score for a Spielberg-directed film.
Joining them is two-time Oscar®
winner Robert Stromberg
as production designer
and fourtime Oscar
winner Joe Letteri
from Weta Digital,
the visual effects
company founded by Peter Jackson,
as senior visual
effects supervisor.
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
For more than
40 years, Steven
Spielberg has been
sharing his stories
with audiences across
the world, introducing
an array of extraordinary characters
into the culture
and sweeping generations
into worlds that
are at once
wondrous, frightening, charming
and palpably real.
Roald Dahl’s seminal
tale of the friendship between
a young girl
and a mysterious
giant seemed perfectly
aligned with the filmmaker’s own body of work, and while it may have
seemed destined that
Sophie and the BFG would
one day find
their way into
Spielberg’s care, it would be decades following
the book’s publication
before the journey
would actually begin.
Dahl’s “The BFG”
was first published
in 1982, the same year
Spielberg’s own story
about an unusual
and transformative friendship,
“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” captured
the hearts and imaginations of children and adults alike.
The British author
is one of the world’s
most creative, mischievous
and successful storytellers, someone
who understands the inner lives
of children and has a knack for creating characters
that kids could
relate to and storylines which
kept them involved.
His ability to combine the fantastical with
the frightening and place children
as the heroes
of his innovative
stories, and adults
as the villains,
is unrivaled in the literary
world. While Dahl’s
stories recognize that
life can be difficult
and sometimes scary,
that there is good with
the bad, he never patronizes
his readers.
Producer Frank Marshall
(“Jurassic World,” the “Bourne” films)
says, “Dahl’s stories
are not just
happy-go-lucky fantasies. There’s
a lot of humor to them, but there’s also
a little bit of a dark side.
He walks on the edge.
They’re a little
scary, and I think that’s
what appeals to people.”
Spielberg agrees, saying,
“It was very
brave of him to introduce
that combination of darkness and light, which
was so much
Walt Disney’s original
signature in a lot of his earlier
works like ‘Dumbo,’
‘Fantasia,’ ‘Snow White’
and ‘Cinderella.’ Being
able to be scary and redemptive at the same
time, and teach
a lesson, an enduring lesson,
to everyone—it was a wonderful
thing for Dahl
to have done,
and it was one of the things
that attracted me to want
to direct this
Dahl book.”
“The BFG” is the story
of the two lonely souls
who, in finding
one another, create
their own home
in the world,
which is a consistent thread
in Spielberg’s rich
body of work.
“Steven has always
gravitated towards stories
about families, which
is one of the reasons
his films have
resonated with so many people,”
says executive producer
Kathleen Kennedy (“Star
Wars: The Force
Awakens,” the “Indiana
Jones” films).
Kennedy and Marshall
were familiar with
many of Dahl’s
other books like
“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,”
“James and the Giant Peach”
and “Matilda” which
have sold over
200 million copies
worldwide, but neither had read “The
BFG.” It wasn’t
until a chance
encounter on the set of “Milk Money”
in 1993 that
Kennedy read it for herself
and realized that
Spielberg, their longtime
friend, colleague and collaborator, was just the person to appreciate the scope, playfulness
and sheer invention
of Dahl’s book.
Spielberg has been
a fan of Dahl’s for years, and in fact
had read the book to his own children when
they were younger.
“It’s a story
about friendship, it’s
a story about
loyalty and protecting
your friends and it’s a story that
shows that even
a little girl
can help a big giant
solve his biggest
problems,” he says.
Dahl created stories
to tell his children and grandchildren, but was always
hesitant to write
any of them
down, something with
which the director
could relate. “When
I told my kids stories
that they were
especially fond of, they would
beg me to make a movie about
it,” Spielberg says.
“Fortunately Dahl did eventually agree
to share his stories with
the world, and we’re all the better
because of it.”
“The BFG” is enormously popular
around the world,
and to date
has been published
in 41 languages.
It was also
Dahl’s own favorite
of all his stories. While
the author passed
away in 1990
at the age of 74, the producers
forged a relationship with
his widow and had many
conversations about how important the book was to Dahl
and whether or not a movie was even realistic.
“We talked a lot about
whether it would
be better
as animation or live action,
because at the time, none
of the technology
that we were
talking about using
even existed,” explains
Kennedy.
But first, the producers needed
a screenwriter to spin Dahl’s
delightfully simple book
into a full-length
screenplay—someone with a special skill
and instinct for children’s stories,
and for that
they turned to friend and colleague Melissa
Mathison (“The Black
Stallion,” “The Indian
in the Cupboard”).
“Melissa was the first and only writer
we thought of,”
says Kennedy. “Her
gifts as a writer and her particular
sensibility were essential
to bringing Dahl’s
visionary tale to life.”
4
When reading Dahl’s
book, the screenwriter was drawn to the bond
between Sophie and the BFG.
“It is a very sweet
relationship,” she said,
“But they actually
start off a little combative
and are suspicious
of one another
and even have
their own little
power struggles. But from the moment they
have a plan
and move forward
as partners, there’s
just so much
love between them.
It’s a wonderful
little love story.”
Mathison visited Gipsy
House, Dahl’s home
in Buckinghamshire, England,
on numerous occasions,
where she was given access
to the author’s
library and study.
There, she explored
the life and works of this extraordinary writer
so as to chart her own path
into the wild,
funny and rich
landscape of his imagination, which
provided her with
a foundation for capturing the spirit of Dahl’s adventure,
further honing its sense of place and capturing the relationship at its heart
in ways that
would both build
upon and honor “The
BFG.”
Of utmost importance
to the filmmakers
was remaining faithful
to Dahl’s voice,
keeping consistent with
the author’s rhythm,
language and interaction
between his characters,
all of which
were uniquely his.
“I tried to use Dahl’s
dialogue verbatim as much as possible,” Mathison
said. “We didn’t
want to tamper
with the tone.”
The script did present numerous
challenges for the writer, however.
“In a strange
way, not much
happens in the book because
it really is about their
relationship,” said Mathison.
“There’s no dramatic
drive to it. Their decision
to try and get rid of the giants happens
pretty easily and quickly, and there was an episodic
quality to the chapters. It wasn’t as story-driven, so we needed
to create a narrative.”
Just as the filmmakers anticipated, Mathison
took a personal
approach to the material, maintaining
the relationship between
the scrappy orphan
and the word-jumbly
giant as they
took on their
big adventure. “My imagination was invested in the two of them,”
she said. “Everything
needed to be centered on their relationship.”
“Melissa took Dahl’s
book and did the most
extraordinary but faithful
translation, with a magic only
Melissa possesses,” says
Spielberg.
Once the script
was completed, Mathison
would remain involved
with the film
throughout principal photography. Spielberg
occasionally needs to make changes
to the script
while filming and wants the writer’s voice
there to bring
the characters alive.
“Melissa was there
on the ‘E.T.’
set every day,
and every day on ‘The
BFG,’” says Spielberg.
“So I’ve been
very fortunate to bookend
our relationship with
two stories that
came from her heart.”
He continues, “I have not had a chance to mourn Melissa,
because she's been
so vibrant and real to me, in the cutting
room, on the scoring stage,
in the dubbing
room—she's just always
been there with
me, so because
of that, it's
going to be hard when
I have to let ‘The
BFG’ go, because
then I have
to let Melissa
go, too.”
A DISNEY CONNECTION
“The BFG” marked
somewhat of a departure for Steven Spielberg.
He explains, “I've
been very blessed
to have had all kinds
of beautiful experiences
telling stories. I'm hesitant to emphasize one story over
the other because
they have all had tremendous
value to me. But I think the number of historical movies
that I've been
making—films like ‘Lincoln,’
‘Bridge of Spies’
and then going
further back to films like
‘Amistad’ and ‘Schindler’s List’—have
kept me fettered
to the accuracy
of telling a historical story.”
“So being able
to escape into
the world of dreams and imaginations has been a dream in itself,” he continues. “That
makes ‘The BFG’
special, because it was my escape into
what I think
I kind of do best,
which is just
let my imagination
run away with
itself.”
According to Spielberg,
he was raised
on Grimm fairytales
and they were
very dark and very frightening
with no redeeming
social value, whatsoever.
“They were almost
object lessons for kids, but Dahl and Disney both
subscribed to the precepts of children's folklore
and embraced the darkness,
because what is a fairytale
without a dark
center?” he says.
“Without that dark
center, where is the redemption,
and how do you bring
all of us out from
the bowels of a nightmare
into the most
beautiful, enchanting dream
we'd ever seen?”
The fact that
Dahl chose a young girl
as his protagonist
in “The BFG”
was something the director appreciated
as well. Sophie
is a strong
girl who does
not take no for an answer and is not intimidated by someone who is six-times
bigger than her,
and the character
is similar to strong females
who are at the center
of many Walt
Disney films.
“Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs” has always
been Spielberg’s favorite
Disney film. “I saw it in a movie theater
during its ninth
revival when I was only
seven or eight
years old and it really
stuck with me. I can still remember
being so frightened
and terrified, but at the same time,
so satisfied with
that amazing ending.”
Roald Dahl and Walt Disney
actually met in April of 1943 to discuss a number of projects, one of which
was “The Gremlins,”
one of Dahl’s
first stories. The film was eventually shelved,
but was later
released as a book by Disney and Random House
with all proceeds
going to the Royal Air Force Benevolent
Fund. The book
did go on however, to serve as inspiration for the 1984
film “Gremlins,” which,
coincidentally, was produced
by Spielberg.
The filmmakers were
all in agreement
that “The BFG”
felt like a hybrid
between a classic
Disney film and a movie
from Amblin Entertainment (the
production company Spielberg,
Kennedy and Marshall
founded in 1981),
so they were
thrilled when the studio green
lit the film
in the spring
of 2015, making
“The BFG” the first Walt
Disney film to be directed
by Steven Spielberg.
“There’s a level
of expectation that
fans and audiences
of Walt Disney
movies expect,” says
Kennedy, “And we’re
proud to have
the film attached
to such a studio.”
CASTING
THE BIG FRIENDLY
GIANT
It was on the first day of filming
“Bridge of Spies,”
Steven Spielberg’s dramatic
Cold War thriller,
that the director
realized he had found his BFG. Renowned
stage actor Mark
Rylance, whose credits
include TV’s “Wolf
Hall” and the acclaimed stage
productions “Twelfth Night”
and “Jerusalem,” among
others, was playing
convicted Soviet spy Rudolf Abel,
a character far removed from
that of the sweet, but simple giant
depicted in “The BFG.” While the director was aware of Rylance’s profound
range as an actor, and in fact
had been following
his career for some time,
something else clicked
that day.
“Mark would go into complete
character transformation when
the camera was rolling,” says
Spielberg, “And while
he is one of the greatest stage
actors ever, it was the Mark in between takes
that really touched
my heart. It was then
that I knew
he could do anything.”
Spielberg continues, “I could have
made ‘The BFG’
with actors on oversized sets
using a digital
blend, but I wanted the giants to look beyond human.
The only way I could
capture magic with
the giants was to animate
them based on the performances of the actors
I was casting
and have the animation be super-photorealistic.”
At 24-feet-tall the BFG is the smallest
of the giants
in Giant Country
(his brothers range
in size from
39-feet to 52-feet),
but he is also the kindest. He speaks Gobblefunk,
reads “Nicholas Nickleby”
by Dahl’s Chickens
and catches dreams
which he shares
with children as they sleep.
“The BFG is a vegetable-eating, peaceful
giant,” said screenwriter Melissa
Mathison. “Even though
he detests Snozzcumber, he eats it, almost as if contrition
for the fact
that his fellow
giants eat children.”
Rylance was immediately
inspired by Mathison’s
script, and says,
“Melissa added some
twists and turns
and made Dahl’s
original story much
more dramatic, in a way that gives
you more of a chance
to see the friendship develop.”
“He is just
misunderstood,” Rylance continues.
“The BFG and Sophie are both isolated
beings, and they
find a friend
who understands them,
maybe better than
they do, and those are the best
kind of friends.
That's part of the great
love and friendship
they have for each other.”
FINDING SOPHIE
The central heartbeat
of the story
is the relationship between
the BFG and Sophie. Newcomer
Ruby Barnhill plays
Sophie, the curious
and compassionate young
orphan who is whisked out of her bed and taken to Giant Country,
but finding a young actress
to play such
a significant role
was a daunting
prospect.
The character of Sophie,
who was named
after Dahl’s first
granddaughter, can't be pushed around.
“She is one of the strongest female
characters I think
I have ever
had in one of my films,” says
Steven Spielberg. “She
gives so much
hope and encouragement to the BFG.”
For six months
the filmmakers looked
at thousands of girls varying
in age and experience, but when the director saw 9-year old Barnhill, a school girl
from Knutsford in Cheshire, England,
her audition stopped
him dead in his tracks.
“There was just
something about her,”
Spielberg says. “She
is fascinating and incredibly talented,
and just perfect
for this role.”
The filmmakers set up a meeting between
Barnhill and Mark
Rylance where they
spent an hour
and a half
improvising, and they
knew they had found their
Sophie. “They immediately
hit it off and have
amazing chemistry together,”
executive producer Kathleen
Kennedy says “They would play
table tennis and basketball between
shots, and were
basically inseparable.”
According to Barnhill,
“I did about
five auditions in London and Berlin where
I pretended to be Sophie,
so it was just so incredible when
I heard I got the part. I could hardly
breathe.”
The young actress
was drawn to the relationship between
her character and the big friendly giant.
She explains, “The
BFG has had his heart
broken, and he’s
actually quite sad most of the time.
And obviously his brothers are horrible to him and they bully
him around all the time
and call him a runt.
Sophie is lonely
and alone in the world just
like the BFG…they
are actually both
orphans in a sense.”
Producer Frank Marshall
agrees, saying, “The
BFG doesn't really
have anybody and doesn't think
he needs anybody,
and Sophie feels
very much the same way.
And it's not until the two come
together that they
both realize that
they actually really
do need other
people.”
“Ruby is a very imaginative
young woman and just a complete natural
actress,” says Rylance.
“I learned from
her really, as you do from all the young
people. Her ability
to take very
complicated technical notes
from Steven and make them
natural is just
miraculous, just remarkable.”
And the feeling
was mutual. “Working
with Mark was really lovely.
He’s always got a smile
on his face
and he’s kind
to me all of the time,” Barnhill
says. “And, I think we have quite
a good relationship, almost
like Sophie and the BFG.”
“Ruby is fantastic,”
adds Kennedy, “But
that's always been
one of Steven’s
gifts: his ability
to cast children
and to recognize those
qualities that audiences
will find captivating.”
The director creates
an atmosphere of safety, comfort
and security for the child.
He explains, “I don't talk
to them like
I'm the principal
of their school,
or a strict
parent, we just
basically engage in conversation. We just talk,
not about the work at hand, but about how they are feeling or what they
are doing at that time.
It makes them
feel like they
are someplace very
familiar. And that
is the best
way to get truth and authenticity from
a child actor.”
THE HUMAN BEANS
The first and only person
Steven Spielberg pictured
as the Queen
in “The BFG”
was British actress
Penelope Wilton (“The
Best Exotic Marigold
Hotel,” “Pride &
Prejudice”). He was taken with
her performance as Isobel Crawley
in the hit PBS television
series “Downton Abbey,”
and knew she would be perfect.
Wilton was honored
to even be considered for the role.
“I was a bit amazed,
because I didn’t
even know Steven
Spielberg knew who I was,”
laughs Wilton, “But
I would love
to work with
him any time.
Steven leaves you alone to do your
work…he doesn’t tell
you what to do, he sort of tempers what
you do. He nudges you when he sees you doing something
he likes and if you’re
doing something too much, he’ll
nudge you back.”
It is the Queen who is the crucial component
to Sophie’s plan,
which is to enlist the majester’s support
and permanently get rid of the disruptive
giants so that the BFG can lead a peaceful life.
Wilton was especially
impressed with Mathison’s
screenplay, saying, “The
emotional content between
the characters is so real.
And it’s terribly
witty.”
Actress Rebecca Hall
(“The Gift,” “Iron
Man 3”), who was cast
as Mary, the Queen’s handmaid,
agrees, saying “I loved how Melissa managed
to remain completely
faithful to the spirit of ‘The BFG’
while also adding
a lot of little personal
touches.”
Hall has a very personal
connection to Roald
Dahl’s book. “As a child
it was the first
book I was able to read by myself. Around
that same time
I also did a TV program in London where
I played a character named
Sophie, and even
though it had nothing to do with
the book I have distinct
memories of fantasizing
that I was actually the Sophie from
‘The BFG.’”
In the role
of Mr. Tibbs,
the Queen’s butler,
the filmmakers cast
British actor Rafe
Spall (“The Big Short”). Mr. Tibbs, who is married
to the Queen’s
handmaid Mary, makes
the BFG feel
at home in Buckingham Palace,
fashioning a chair
for him out of clocks,
a piano and a ping
pong table. Coincidentally, the actor had worked with
both Wilton and Hall in the past
on two separate
projects, which made
for a comfortable
vibe on set.
Plus, the Buckingham
Palace scenes were
shot towards the end of principal photography, so the three
actors were working
with a very
established crew.
Spall explains, “It’s
been really nice
to come in towards the end of production.
There’s a really lovely
energy on set and it works extraordinarily efficiently, which
is also due to the fact that
the department heads
on Steven’s crew
work with him a lot.”
THE CANNYBULL AND MURDERFUL GIANTS
From the BFG’s
cave in Giant
Country, Sophie catches
her first glimpse
of the nine
fearsome giants. The cannybull and murderful motley
group of mythical
beasts who roam
the earth gobbling
up human beans
provided all kinds
of opportunities for invention, creativity
and frightening fun for Steven
Spielberg, his actors and his creative
team.
Of all the evil giants
who inhabit Giant
Country, the BFG’s
nine brothers are the worst.
Substantially larger in size, they
treat the BFG with cruelty
and disdain, but in typical
Roald Dahl fashion,
they are also
there to make
us laugh. Dahl
was somewhat of a giant
in real life
himself, standing 6-feet,
6-inches-tall.
Fleshlumpeater, who is played by the multi-talented actor,
comedian and musical
artist Jemaine Clement
(“The Flight of the Conchords”), is 52-feet-tall with
a big ego and a very small
head. While he is the leader of the pack,
the alpha male,
in truth he is just
a bully and a coward
and not the brightest of the bunch.
“My character is just a pile of muscles,” says
Clement. “The BFG describes him as a cannibal, which
is pretty accurate
as he finds
humans – especially
children – delicious.”
Actor and comedian
Bill Hader (“Trainwreck,” “Inside
Out”) is Bloodbottler, the real brains
of the pack.
He is 43-feet-tall with
a big beard
and can always
be found at Fleshlumpeater’s side
telling him what
to do. “In reality, Bloodbottler wants
nothing to do with any of the other giants…he
just wants to be left
alone,” says Hader.
“He does not like the BFG and he has created his own set of rules
that the BFG is somehow
breaking by just
being himself.”
British actor Adam
Godley (“Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory”) is Manhugger,
the thin and slowest moving
giant. He does
the least of anyone and thinks only of himself. At 39-feet-tall, Gizzardgulper is the shortest
of the nine
giants. As played
by Chris Gibbs
(TV’s “Reign”), he is also
the peacekeeper of the group
and idolizes Fleshlumpeater. Bonecruncher is played by Michael David
Adamthwaite (“Final Destination
5”) and is the youngest
of the group
and a troublemaker who often puts
the others in danger.
Meatdripper, who is played by Canadian actor
Paul Moniz de Sa (TV’s
“The Flash”), is the jokester
of the group
and loves to go hunting
for children. Jonathan
Holmes (TV’s “Descendants”) plays
Childchewer, Meatdripper’s best
friend. He is the best
looking of the group, and as a result, is always concerned
with his appearance.
Icelandic actor Ólafur
Ólafsson (“The Last
Witch Hunter”) is Maidmasher, who is the most stylish
of the group.
While masculine in his demeanor
and appearance, he is also
very in touch
with his feminine
side.
Butcherboy, who is played by Daniel Bacon
(“The Day the Earth Stood
Still”), walks with
a limp, the result of a fight
with Meatdripper which
left him partially
paralyzed. He would
love to someday
be top dog but knows
it will never
happen, and he has a chip on his shoulder
as a result.
To help assimilate
the nine actors
into one unruly
but cohesive tribe,
the production brought
on former Cirque
du Soleil performer
Terry Notary as the film’s
movement choreographer. As enormous giants,
they move differently, and Notary used
a combination of weights and bungee cords
to build the strength and flexibility of the actors
and help make them
feel grounded and heavy, like
they were moving
through thick space,
to help impart
a sense of scale to their performances.
“The process I use gives
the actors the freedom to put their
own spin on their character
and helps fine-tune
their performances,” Notary
explains. The actors’
performances were filmed
via performance-capture technology
so they could
be created digitally
later on in production.
As the actors
worked out their
characters’ physicalities, the giants’ personalities and group dynamics
emerged organically. “We all talked
about making sure
each giant was funny, but at the same time
they had to be scary
and threatening too,”
says Hader. “We worked hard
to find that
balance, developing our characters so they each
became incredibly distinct,
and after weeks
of training, each
actor had found
his own gait,
signature trait and way of moving.”
At the same
time, costume designer
Joanna Johnston (“Lincoln,”
“War Horse”) was working with
seven foot maquettes
modeled after the giants, dressing
them to get a sense
of how the costumes should
be physically constructed
and how they
would behave. Even
though the giants
would all be created digitally,
Johnston designed costumes
for each one.
These costumes would
end up both
inspiring and guiding
the actors’ performances and would then
provide the animators
who would be bringing the giants to life with
a detailed, real
world template with
which they could
follow.
“Joanna outdid herself
with the costumes
for the giants,”
says Steven Spielberg.
“They were so creative and were just
beautiful.”
In addition to shaping
the looks of the virtual
characters, Johnston’s creativity
and attention to detail helped
provide the actors
portraying live-action characters
with a foundation
upon which to further hone
their performances. “Joanna’s
costumes helped enormously,” explains
Hall. “She’s truly
one of the most detailed
and brilliant costume
designers I’ve ever
worked with. She has such
precision, everything down
to the slip
I was wearing.”
Spall agrees, saying,
“The first time
I put on Joanna’s costume,
I immediately knew
what I was going to do because
it had been
made perfectly for me…you could
just feel the part.”
“What I found
so interesting is that I started to walk like
the Queen once
I was in my costume,”
adds Wilton.
When designing the Queen’s wardrobe,
Johnston sought out small details
which would help
articulate the subtle
line between a child’s fantasy
and the royal
palace. Says Wilton,
“Because these characters
exist in another
world, my character
wears necklaces, earrings
and diadems that
are just slightly
larger than those
that would be worn in real life.”
The costume designer
fitted Wilton with
a wig that
was an exact
replica of the one worn
by the current
Queen of England
and gloves that
were made by the Queen’s
glove maker and a bag by the Queen’s bag maker. “The
details were just
extraordinary,” Wilton raves.
“All these things
were very important
for us,” says
producer Frank Marshall,
“As they helped
to provide a sense of the reality
to contrast with
the fantasy world.”
With the cast
in place, the filmmakers began to focus on translating the scope of the book
onto the big screen, which
was a technological challenge
that sparked the director’s imagination. On its surface,
the logistical puzzle
presented by the story is barely evident.
But “The BFG”
required something much
more than new worlds synthesized
in the computer.
This special story
about the friendship
between two very
different characters, one small, the other very
big, one real,
one fantastical, would
inspire the creation
of an entirely
new way of fusing the elements of fantasy and reality.
PRE-VISUALIZING “THE
BFG”
Steven Spielberg
has long occupied
a singular place
at the intersection of storytelling and technology. He has been
both a conservationist of traditional filmmaking
practices as well
as one of the chief
drivers of new film technologies, shaping
and mastering the tools which
have brought the storytelling imagination
alive for generations
of cinema audiences.
To help determine
the best way to film
both live-action and performance-capture elements
simultaneously throughout the film and have them
seamlessly integrated, the filmmakers
created a pre-visualized version
of the entire
film before shooting
even began.
Spielberg gathered several
members of his creative team
and a handful
of production assistants
in the garage
of his summer
home back east
and choreographed, blocked
and filmed each
scene within the digital world.
Using a small,
handheld virtual camera
device, PAs in performance-capture suits,
and crude animation,
the low-res footage
was then rendered
in 3D so it could
be broken down
and analyzed once
completed.
“It became my prototype for the film and helped me to realize
the story and determine the best way to tell
the story,” Spielberg
says. “It was one of the most
valuable rehearsal exercises
I have ever
put myself through,
and it helped
me to understand
the deepest, deepest
DNA of the story.”
THE GROUND-BREAKING TECHNOLOGY
Principal photography on “The BFG”
commenced in the Spring of 2015 on the outskirts
of Vancouver in an old warehouse where
the huge, dark
spaces became stages
on which to construct the sets.
With “The BFG,”
the filmmakers envisioned
an entirely new approach to expand the horizons of storytelling by bridging the gap between
the fullness and life of live action
and the limitless
possibilities of contemporary digital
technologies. It was a process
that would be engineered solely
through the lens
of exactly what
Spielberg needed to tell the story.
Rather than capturing
the bones of the performances separately
and then merging
the human and digital performances in post-production, they
chose to enlist
the support of Weta Digital’s
Joe Letteri and his
talented team
of artists to devise an entirely new process that
would be as close to live-action shooting
as possible.
As a result,
production on “The
BFG” was a hybrid style
of filmmaking using
a blend of liveaction and performance-capture techniques
to bring the story’s fantastical
characters to life,
all on real
sets that were
built specifically for the film.
According to Letteri
(“Batman vs. Superman:
Dawn of Justice,”
“Avatar”), whose relationship with
Spielberg dates back
to 1993 and “Jurassic Park”
when he worked
as a computer graphics
artist, “We wanted
to allow Steven
to be able
to work as Steven, to utilize all the elements
he brings to the process:
his creative team,
live action sets,
lighting and costumes,
while simultaneously creating
a virtual world.”
He continues, “For
much of the film, Sophie
is a little
girl in this
land of fantasy
which is inhabited
by giants, but we gave
Steven the ability
to shoot the movie as if the whole thing
was live-action so as to bridge the gap between
the virtual worlds
and the digital
worlds.” Previous films
featuring performance-capture technology
like “Avatar” or “The Adventures
of Tin Tin”
were shot on a very
sparse set where
the actors had to imagine
their surroundings.
The director also
relied on Simulcam,
an idea originally
created by director
James Cameron on “Avatar.” Simulcam
is the process
of combining real
world actors and sets with
actors and sets
that are computer-generated. Letteri
explains, “With Simulcam,
we can pre-record
a performance and then play
it back through
the camera monitor
so that the camera operators
could actually see the virtual
performance unfolding in real time
as they're photographing the live-action scene.
By combining the two, they're
able to make
decisions and frame
and actually even
cue actions based
on what's happening
in the virtual
world.”
This new process
afforded the director
the opportunity to film actors
in performancecapture suits
acting on the same set with the film’s human
characters, and it was especially
important to Spielberg
that Ruby Barnhill
and Mark Rylance have
interaction with one another.
ESTABLISHING HUMAN
CONTACT BETWEEN THE REAL AND VIRTUAL CHARACTERS
Throughout his career,
Steven Spielberg has shown a deft touch
in creating conditions
for performances to flourish, even
amidst the most
challenging of circumstances. Setting
the stage for the friendship
between a 24-foot
giant and a 4-foot 6-inch
girl required a shared vision
and years’ worth
of imagination and innovation. “Actors
need each other
to act together,”
the director says.
“It all comes
down to the actors being
able to look
each other in the eye.”
Adds Mark Rylance,
“It’s why we look in other people’s
eyes when we're
speaking with them.
If you're speaking
with someone you can’t see,
it's much more
difficult to know
how to phrase
it or how to express
it.”
At the center
of the production’s challenge
to enable the characters to act within
the same environment, was veteran production
designer Rick Carter
(“Avatar,” “Forrest Gump”).
“The goal was to create
as intimate a space where
Steven could work
with the actors
and the actors
could relate to one another,
so that technology
would not be an obstruction
to Steven’s direction
or take any authenticity away
from the performances,” he says.
As a result,
Carter and his co-production designer
Rob Stromberg (“Alice
in Wonderland,” “The
Golden Compass”) went
to great lengths
to accommodate three
different worlds for three different-sized beings,
in some cases
duplicating sets three
times over. There
was a set for the 50-foot tall
giants, for the 24-foot tall
BFG and a huge, overscale set with big overscale props
for Sophie to make her look small.
Fortunately Rylance has a tremendous
amount of faith
in the story
and Ruby Barnhill,
a tremendous amount
of faith in her imagination. “Between
Mark's belief in story and how to perform the story, and Ruby's belief
that everything is possible, both
of those actors
made this world
of evolved technology
disappear so that
they could give
each other the most authentic
performances.”
For scenes on the overscale
set featuring both
Sophie and the BFG in the same
shot, the filmmakers
built a two-story
scaffolding structure on which Rylance
would stand with
a performance-capture camera
floating in front
of his face
to allow eye contact and true rapport.
Even the performance-capture sets
were constructed to accommodate the difference in size between
the BFG and his bullying
brothers, so that
Jemaine Clement, Bill
Hader and their
gang of goliaths
crouched and squeezed
themselves into the grey-scale model
of the BFG’s
cave, acting to a rag doll-sized BFG while Rylance performed
off camera (or,
if space allowed,
made himself small
enough to crouch
and provide his fellow actors
with eye contact).
As a result,
Spielberg was constantly
moving from set to set,
deftly balancing a variety of filmmaking techniques
on different stages
in a space
that encompassed more
than 3,000 square
feet. In between
set-ups, he could
slip into one of two small tents
on the stages
where a dozen
display screens fanned
out. Here, the filmmaker could
design, construct and reframe his shots using
the small
handheld virtual camera.
Originally set up as a means for the director
to view coverage
of his performance-capture footage,
the director’s skill
and enthusiasm soon
rendered the tents
into a hub of discovery
that further bridged
the gaps between
traditional filmmaking and the 21st
century digital processes.
THE SETS
The environments created
on the vast
stages of the warehouse needed
to do much
more than solely
accommodate the vastly
different scales of the characters.
Production designer Rick
Carter and his team worked
especially hard to ensure that
the environments in which the performances unfolded
were as beautiful,
frightening and rich
as possible. Joe Letteri explains,
“When Mark Rylance
is on set and performing,
he’s performing in a facsimile
of his real
world, in his cave with
his fireplace and table, his chair and the boat
in which he sleeps.”
According to executive
producer Kristie Macosko
Krieger (“Bridge of Spies,” “Lincoln”),
“The thing that
was most important
to Steven was that the actors believed
where they were
and that they could
exclude from their
peripheral vision everything
going on around
them.”
One of the roles of production design
is to create
environments and places
that evoke something
about, not only
the storyline and the characters,
but the themes
of the film
as well. As such, the production crafted
worlds within worlds
where Spielberg could
create his vision
for Dahl’s story.
“Steven started off with a very intimate
process, just a computer and a few people in a room,”
explains Carter, “And
then we came
to a big space
and expanded it while still
trying to keep
it as intimate
as possible.”
Included in the expansive traditional
sets were the high ceilings
and royal reds
and golds of Buckingham Palace;
the quaint Scandinavian home
where Sophie and the BFG travel to deliver good
dreams to a small boy and his family; the dark and forgotten orphanage
on a cobblestone
London street lined
with small shops
and gas street
lamps; and the lonely interior
of the dormitory
where Sophie’s adventure
with the BFG begins. And these sets
were all within
footsteps of one another. “It was like
having access to your own little Disneyland,” says
Macosko Krieger.
For executive producer
Kathleen Kennedy, the sets conveyed
a sense of timelessness, which
was very much
in synch with
Roald Dahl’s original
story. “Dahl was telling a universal story,
and, one of the key reasons that
we built these
sets is to give the film that
slightly other worldly
quality,” she says.
“You might recognize
a street corner
or a building
or notice an architectural style
that feel familiar,
but you can’t
quite pinpoint it, and that's
what allows you to escape
into this kind
of fairytale world.”
“Rick Carter did an amazing
job,” says Spielberg.
“He designed everything
from the most
amazing, Dickensian cobblestone
streets to a grand ballroom
in Buckingham Palace,
which we built
practically.”
Adds Penelope Wilton,
“It is an absolute replica
of the actual
ballroom with the same carpet
and paintings that
are in the palace itself.
But they also designed
the Queen’s bedroom
which had this
incredible woodwork and gold filling
in the plasterwork
and looks absolutely
marvelous.”
Rylance too, appreciated
the great care
and detail that
went into these
sets, some of which were
created exclusively to give the actors and the filmmakers
a tactile feel
for the worlds
they were exploring.
“A lot of what was created will
never be seen
by the audience,”
Rylance muses. “It was just
there to encourage
a sense of playfulness for us, and for Steven
as well.”
Equally as impressive
were all the magical and inventive props
adorning each set,
some of which
existed in two and sometimes
three different scales.
Included on some
of these sets
were items that
the BFG and the other
giants had repurposed
for their own use. Things
like: a bench
made from the wings of a fighter
plane; a sword
for use as a needle;
a pitchfork and shovel as a fork
and a spoon;
a bathtub for a bowl;
a fire hose
as a belt; a ship’s porthole
as a magnifying
glass; a broom
handle as a fountain pen and many
others.
“There was so much love
put into every
prop,” says Spielberg,
“So much thought
put into something
as simple as the BFG's
bag, which Rick
created to resemble
a big doctor's
bag. Of course
the bag carries
his dreams, but the dreams
are kind of like medicine
for the kids
who are in need of them, and the bag was stitched
together in a Frankenstein-ian way to almost
resemble a patchwork quilt.”
Alongside the traditional
sets, sets the audience would
see exactly as they were
shot and lit,
were the partially-real sets.
These were the spaces Sophie
would inhabit with
the BFG, which
would then be enhanced and completed later
on in the post-production process.
These included: the mist-covered magical
land known as Dream Country
where Sophie and the BFG go dream-catching; a vast hilly
landscape with knotted
tree roots covered
in mossy greens;
and the bleak
and terrifying Giant
Country, desolate, barren
and strewn with
the remains of the plunder
from the Giants’
lethal treks into
the world of human beans.
“Even though we created a virtual world,
there's a live
action counterpart to everything that
we do as well,” says
Joe Letteri. “And
so it’s great
to be able
to work with
people like Rick
Carter who can take that
skill set of knowing how to design
a fantastic world
and get it to work
in a physical
sense and still
be able to apply it to the virtual set.”
THE MAGICAL LIGHTING
EFFECTS
Had the filmmakers tried
to make “The
BFG” when Roald
Dahl’s book came
out in 1982,
it would have
been a completely
different film. But with today’s
performance-capture technology and digital photography, the director was able to create the special relationship between
the young orphan
Sophie and the big friendly
giant the way it deserved
to be made.
It was partially
due to the extraordinary contributions of cinematographer Janusz
Kaminski (“Bridge of Spies,” “Saving
Private Ryan”) that the magic on screen looks
as beautiful as it does.
Kaminski was instrumental in lighting all the practical
sets where the live-action scenes
were shot and the virtual
sets being used
to shoot scenes
with performance-capture technology
so they were
seamlessly integrated.
“Working with Janusz
has been great
because there’s a real richness
to his photography, and that really
comes out in what you see on screen,” says
producer Frank Marshall.
“He helped guide
a lot of what we were doing
to create this
world and to really marry
the two so it becomes
one world as you photographically move
between the two.”
“Janusz is someone
who sees light
in a way that is unlike anybody
I have ever
encountered, and in a way that I certainly don't
fully understand,” adds
Joe Letteri. “Our
conversations as to what to bring to this movie
are on levels
that allow him to see into the darkness, and then to see its relationship to light and to then
find the nuances
between the two as to where the light and shadows truly
interact with one another.”
He continues, “Janusz
really paints with
light, and once
everyone saw the sets fully
lit, it was truly magical.
They were better
than we could
have ever imagined.”
INTRODUCING THE BFG TO THE WORLD
When
we read a book by Roald Dahl,
it speaks to us profoundly
as adults and touches the child in all of us. And with Steven
Spielberg at the helm of “The BFG,”
the film will
undoubtedly capture the minds of children
and adults alike,
just as Dahl's
stories have done
for decades.
“I think everyone
dreams of having
an adventure like
the one Sophie
goes on in ‘The BFG,’”
says producer Frank
Marshall. “It’s a story that
will appeal to all ages,
and you can’t
help but be captivated by the magical
story and the fantastical characters.”
“With ‘The BFG,’
Steven is able
to return to the innocence
he had explored
earlier in his career,” says
production designer Rick
Carter. “He’s a grandfather now…he’s
both the BFG and the innocent young
person. But this
is a story
that taps into
everybody’s childhood experience
of things that
come out of the dark
and what those
things are about.”
For Bill Hader,
watching the director
at work was a dream
come true. “Steven
is so calm
and friendly on set, and he makes
something incredibly complicated
look incredibly simple.”
As for the director himself,
it was one of the most beautiful
and curious experiences
in his career.
“Curious because when I first walked
onto the stages
and I saw the different
levels of complexity
and the technology
that was required
to realize even
a single shot,
I was, for the first
time since ‘Jaws,’
completely overwhelmed,” he explains. “I wasn’t sure
exactly how to pull it off, but I’m so grateful for the artistry
and generosity of the extraordinary people
whose creativity, precision
and spirit of invention made
it possible.”
The icing on the cake
for the filmmakers
was being able
to partner with
Walt Disney
Studios on the film. “I have directed
films at every
studio except Disney,”
says Spielberg, “So this was the first
time that I got to make a picture that
has Sleeping Beauty's
castle and Disney
embossed on the beginning and the end of the picture, and I'm really
proud of that.”
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