FAN SITE FRIDAYS: NEW INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS WEITZ (PART ONE)

Welcome back to yet another edition of Fan Site Friday! We are closing in on our final week, but we’re going out with a bang. This week and next week we will be bringing you parts one and two of our New Moon movie set interview with director extraordinaire, Chris Weitz. In part one of the interview, Chris talks about several different topics like how it has been coming into a movie with such a large and intense fan base, how often he spoke with Stephenie Meyer during filming to assure that the book played out as beautifully as possible on screen, what scene he is most looking forward to seeing, and much, much more. Check out a preview of the interview below:

How is the transition from your version to Catherine Hardwicke’s film? Sometimes when directors change there is a big change. You can tell from the style. What kind of style do you bring to this film?

Chris: I think the biggest change would be that I am a bit of an old fogy. I’m old-fashioned and I think Catherine is very “fashion forward” and conscious of a pop sensibility. I am more tied to the old-fashioned romantic films. So that would be, if you were a film nerd, you would notice the palate of the film, the camera work. I am a lot less likely to use hand-held cameras than Catherine Hardwicke is. Things like that, they are more stylistic differences than my kind of “taking it and throwing it away.”

Obviously I owe her a lot, because she cast this great cast [so] I kind of inherited this cool “toolbox” and this extraordinary fan base.

Was there anything from the first film that you felt you had to change?

Chris: No, I don’t. I think the key things that worked with the first movie are the relationships and the feelings of the main characters are the [same] things will work about this. Everything else is just bells and whistles. I mean, there are a lot more special effects in this film so the fact that I had a lot of experience in that area kind of helps. But it shouldn’t feel so different. It shouldn’t suddenly as though you are in an action movie or a visual effects movie. It is wrong if it feels that way. It is only right if the visual effects convey the feeling that is in the books in the first place. The world of the book expands naturally, like with the Volturi. Obviously, they weren’t in the first movie at all but that has been an organic development.

VIEW THE FULL INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT AND LISTEN TO THE AUDIO, HERE.

And don’t forget to check back in next week where we will be bringing you part two of our New Moon set interview with Chris Weitz!