EXCLUSIVE AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL REPORT

Our wonderful member and hardcore Twilighter Evie was lucky enough to attend the Austin Film Festival last night and took some great notes on Rob’s new movie, How to Be, his Q&A portion, and the Twilight panel with Melissa Rosenberg, the screen play writer for Twilight.

Here are some of her notes from Rob’s Q&A:

Rob was asked about how he chooses movies. He said that after playing Cedric in Harry Potter, he was really typecast, and wasn’t getting any parts. He was seen as the good, private school kid. So he almost gave up acting, and just concentrated on his music. He audtitioned for How to Be though, and got the part of the lead. The director said the casting director had recently just called him, and told him that if he would not have cast Rob, she had planned on quitting. The director was also really not aware of Rob’s character in HP.

Rob said he likes playing lots of characters so he enjoyed How To Be, and Little Ashes where he played Salvadore Dali. He then said he also really like playing a vampire in Twilight. He had started to say that he looked for different roles, but then just back-tracked and said he was taking the all the parts that he got since there were not that many. (At that point someone in the audience yelled that this was about to change.) This caused him more embarassment and fidgeting. He continued to run his hand through his hair.

And here are a bit of her notes from the Twilight panel:

The very first thing we got was a long clip of Twilight. It was very similar to the Ballet Scene clip that was shown at Comic Con. It was a little more polished and just a little bit longer. From the moment Bella walks into the ballet studio, to the moment when Bella is reacting to her bite from James.

Melissa stressed that they want to tell the story of Stephenie’s Twilight. They really wanted to stay as close to the book as they could. Some dialogue needed to be added into other areas, and re-arranged with action, as two hours of just two people talking would be extremely boring. She also did not read beyond Twilight until she finished writing, as she didn’t want the following books to influence how she wrote. She did say that the director told her that Jacob would be important later on, so not to discount him. She has however read them all now. Melissa did read a chapter of Midnight Sun, so she knew the flavor, but she did not read more, because this is Twilight, and Twilight is told from Bella’s point of view.

One of the first things Melissa commented on was the fact that Bella is such an introverted character. So much of the book is us hearing what Bella is actually thinking. She thought it was a huge challenge to bring that to the screen. Melissa said she is not a big fan of voice-overs. She sees them as a “crutch”. So in the beginning Twilight did not have many voice-overs, but as she worked with Catherine Hardwicke they began to see that many places in the film would indeed need voice-overs so we would hear Bella.

Last but not least, here is a picture of Evie with the wonderful Twilight screen play writer, Melissa Rosenberg:

Wow! All I can say is wow. She wrote such awesome notes on the festival that I feel like I was there. I really love Melissa Rosenberg and I think all of the answers that she gives when she talks about Twilight are awesome. She is very intelligent and I can only hope her amazing talent shows through on the film.

What did you guys think? Was anyone else lucky enough to go?