Countdown: 57 Days to Go - Formic Society

What looks like Formic skycrapers, they're not! Nothing's living in there. They are wind, air, and temperature management devices essentially, very much like the thermal management flues that actual insect colonies have. Formic society is largely subterranean so what we're seeing is really tips of an iceberg that indicate a much larger life going on below the surface.

Source:  Film School Rejects

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Countdown: 58 Days to Go - Lake House

In the film, the Lake House is supposedly called the Veterans' Retreat, a place for retired soldiers or people who have possibly been injured and quit the program: "We had some great exo-skeletons and bionic arms, fancy wheelchairs for the people that were in the scene there."
(Don Miloyevich, prop master)

Source:  Ender News

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Set Visit Report #5 - Stunt Coordinator Garrett Warren

Garrett Warren's eye patch is a funny thing: It's the first thing you notice when you meet him, but the last thing you think about after you've been around him for just a few minutes.

Garrett Warren and Jimmy Jax Pinchak

The Ender's Game stunt coordinator, known for his work on Avatar, Alice in Wonderland, and all three Transformers films, is one of the most sought-after men in Hollywood. He recently wrapped on the highly-anticipated Divergent in Chicago but when we first met him last July he was still null-gravity focused, all grins and a big booming voice that surely came in handy when trying to wrangle teenagers for scenes in the Battle Room.

Warren first read Ender's Game when his then 11-year-old daughter was assigned the book for school. "And the only reason why I read it was because I thought it was a really cool cover when I saw it," he told us, with a slight grin. "I have read Twilight, you know, she was reading Twilight for school, and she read The Hunger Games. So, I mean, I do fancy the idea that what she's reading... I'd like to know what she's reading."

"It has some really important lessons to be learned about growing up in the future, which I believe we are doing right now. I love the idea of the whole philosophy of war, and I think that was something that I learned at a later age when I was a fighter - I was a professional fighter - and I read the book Sun Tzu, The Art of War, which is of course required reading for an awful lot of business people in the world. [...] It's incredibly valuable to children as well as adults, so I liked that."

And it was his appreciation for Ender's story that made signing on to this project such a joy for Warren. "I've worked on some great films in my past, I really have," he nodded. "My career is fruitful, and I've worked on some things that are technically groundbreaking. This one's different. This one's amazing."

A Young Cast

Working on a movie with a primary location that is essentially a boarding school in space, the stunt coordinator had to work with a lot of young actors who had school, time limitations and bad days, but he found out that the cast was very eager to practice and rehearse, and in the end their flying skills far exceeded his expectations.

"When we first walked into this show, we pretty much go by the same limitations we always have with kids, and that is no kid should be in a wire for more than five minutes at a time, no more than thirty minutes of training a day, etc. [...] I have to admit, the kids did not want to get out of the wires. They had an awful lot of fun. They would find themselves time while they were doing shots to run over to where we were with our wires and jump in for rehearsals. So as far as our limitations, we really didn't have an awful lot of limitations. I'm very fortunate in saying this, because by the end of their training period, they were all very proficient at flying in these wires. They did it all themselves. So I can't tell you how excited I am for the world to see these kids actually doing their own movements, their own choreography, their own stunts, and their own action."

One day, he said, a couple of the boys became so capable that they were out-performing some of the professional  performers they had hired to help with stunts.

"That was Moises. As well as Aramis. I have to admit, Aramis grew to become amazing in a wire. Aramis was the showboat in a wire. Moises was the guy that would make you look at him and go, oh my gosh, he's weightless. He was able to animate his body so perfectly and show no pendulum or break in his core stability that you would think he's weightless. Aramis was the kind of guy that wanted to flip and fly and bounce off walls, and Moises just wanted to fool the world and make them believe, and he did. He was beautiful, the way he flew weightless. Everyone else did great."

"I can tell you that there was nobody that was bad in the wire; however, it took some people longer than others to try to get there. And let me tell you, we had Cirque du Soleil performers as their stunt doubles, but really I think that the job of the stunt people we had as their doubles was only to be their teachers, because they really didn't do the stunts for the movie. They were only there to basically make sure the harnesses were attached properly and then between shots they flew up and they went, ‘That was great, just animate your hand a little bit more like this,' and then that was all they would do. All the kids did it themselves; it was really good."

Training

Most of the kids walked on the set having never before been challenged in such a physical way, so before they were allowed on the wires, they had to undergo weeks of training, boot camp, and calisthenics to build arm and stomach muscles, as well as close-quarter combat training where they had to learn to "dismantle a person basically with their hands."

Space Camp © Summit Entertainment

"This is the greatest training I have seen in my life and been a part of in my experience as a filmmaker," Warren admitted, "The other training was wires. They were in wires for anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours. They were doing push-ups, calisthenics, they were doing core stability exercises with straps... It was some of the best training I've seen in my life, and the apparatus that we have was an apparatus that hasn't been used in this way in the movie industry before, so it's incredibly difficult. You have to have incredible stomach muscles and lower back muscles to be able to use this piece of equipment that we developed for this movie. And so all the kids when they first got in here were just dying, you know - 'Oh my gosh, this is so hard, it's hurting my back, ahh!' And by the end of about six or seven days, they were all brave. No complaints, they were all 100% ready to do whatever the stunt wants them to do."

They didn't just put the kids on wires to simulate null gravity -- they also developed something completely new which Warren described as the "closest thing to weightlessness you will ever be able to experience on this world." He called it a lollipop, a wire hung on an arm. The actor could be placed in a teetering ring which they could fly around the facility - anywhere they wanted, as far as a football stadium.

"While they're in it, they are able to manipulate themselves. Not someone else on a wire, pulling and tossing, no. They're able to touch something and float away. And they're able to spin around, and they have no wires associated with their bodies as well. And then we put air pumps on anything, so it was like an air hockey game. We were able to move this big huge crane arm that has them on this ring as well around the whole floor."

The Shower Scene

"There's a fight scene in there that I'm incredibly impressed with and proud of. And it's going on my radar," Warren admitted later, surprised when we all jumped to ask more. "Oh, you know the whole shower scene? How'd you know about the shower scene?"

How, indeed.

© Garrett Warren

"I have to admit, aside from the fact that it was a group attack, um... And I'm not going to give you guys anything to spoil, because I really do want you guys to see it in its entirety the way it's done. I think that it's a scene, it's filmed so well. Gavin did such a great job, and Asa and Moises did such an amazing job, that it goes down in the annals of history as a fight sequence that many people will copy, I think, for years to come.  Aside from the fact that they were kids, you know, put that aside, and it's a really good sequence. Your chops will be salivating the whole time watching this scene from beginning to ending, the way that it's drawn out, the way that it's transpired, it's really accurate, the way it's shot - beautiful shots, composed so well, cinematography."

The scene will also use movements taken from aikido, a Japanese form of self-defense and martial art that "employs holds and locks and that uses the principles of nonresistance in order to debilitate the strength of the opponent."

"It's learning how to make more or brush off you instead of smacking. It's learning how to take someone's weight and their momentum and use it against them," Warren explained. "It's constantly seeing someone, figuring out where their weaknesses were, and utilizing that against them. My hat's off to Gavin for wanting to use that for fight scenes."

He was as passionate about the project as we were and we could have chatted all day, but we unfortunately had to wrap before any of us were ready. It was time to explore sets, play with props, and chat with the cast -- a cast made up of a group of young actors Garrett Warren had become very fond of. 

"I think more important than anything was the fact that these are possibly the greatest kids I've ever worked with in my life in the film industry, and I'm not just saying that to be hopefully in your blog," he laughed, and so did we, but it was clear that he meant every word.  "I honestly believe that these are the greatest kids I've ever worked with, so my hat's off to Gavin for his casting process, and my hat's off to the producers for finding these kids because these kids are the next greats in Hollywood. And I'm telling you, whether it be the Al Pacinos or the Robert De Niros or the Natalie Portmans, they are IT. It's really good. So it's not just watching a kid run and jump and do something on-screen. These kids deliver dialogue. These kids..."

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I.F. Battle School Flash Game

Lionsgate has launched a pretty neat flash game today on it's I.F. Battleschool site. We don't want to give too much away, so you just get some see some screenshots of the game. Just try it out for yourself and let us know if you like it in the comments.

Direct Link: http://lionsgatesocial.com/endersgame/battleroomtraining/

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Countdown: 59 Days to Go - Greenhouse

There are lots of little details that maybe nobody will ever notice but where the production designers attempted to add a degree of realism to Ender's world. One example is the heat radiators spread all over the station to pump the heat out of Battle School. Those were added when a consultant warned: "The heat going in that thing, you're gonna cook these kids. It's a greenhouse!"

Source:  Film School Rejects

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Set Visit #4: The Cast Talks Stunts, Buggers, and Pop Tarts

"We're open for questions. Are you game?"

We had been ushered by the producers into a trailer that had been set up in simple press conference style -- a bunch of folding chairs facing a long table where the talent would be sitting. Hailee Steinfeld and Asa Butterfield had entered the room after a few minutes of us chatting aimlessly and flipping through notes, both still in costume: dark turtlenecks, long pants, and the black tactical boots we've seen so often in the film's trailers. I felt terrible for them as May in New Orleans is scorching, but the room was cool and they seemed comfortable -- or, at the very least, resigned to the decidedly unglamorous life on a movie set.

Making use of the short time we knew we had with the pair before they would be called back to filming, the first question was launched and off we went.

Hailee couldn't quite remember how she initially became involved in the Ender's Game project. She had been in the middle of another film when she found out about the role and a few phone calls were made. While the then 15-year-old actress was too soft-spoken and sweet to admit that everyone was probably thrilled to hear that her Oscar-nominated self was interested in the project,  it's easy to imagine casting the character of Petra went very much like this:

"Hello, this is Hailee Steinfeld's rep…"
"Yes."

While no one can doubt his acting chops, London-born Asa Butterfield had a tougher time of it as he had to prove he could pick up a generic American accent.

© Summit Entertainment

"I sent off a lot of audition tapes. And the harder part of it was of course getting into the accent so I did a lot of dialect training. And once I sent off a few tapes, I ended up meeting Gavin in L.A. where I spoke to him and I performed in front of him. And I don't remember how long after that it was, it was during the press tour for Hugo, and my mom told me that I got the part."

And how did he react?

"Well actually, it was just before our flight out to New York to start everything and my mom came into my bedroom and... okay, this is pretty much word for word... she was like, 'Okay, take a deep breath.' And as soon as she said that, I knew what had happened. I literally screamed. Like, I was flipping out. It was amazing," Asa grinned.

While neither Hailee nor Asa had read the book before they'd began the audition process, they both picked it up quickly after booking their roles. We asked Hailee if she found the Petra of the film to be similar to the author's version of the girl with "more balls than anyone else" in Salamander Army and she immediately insisted that she was.

"It's very similar. I mean, the movie is as close to the book as a two-hour movie can get. But for my character I love, you know -- Petra, she's a very strong independent girl and I love that. [...] When I first read a character, if it's a strong female role then that's kind of a part for me."

"The book really helped with the background for Ender, the whole thing about his family and... so that was really helpful," Asa remarked. "And there is a lot, sort of, on Wikipedia about the past and all of the law to the Hegemon and the Strategos, so that was all really helpful."

The Hamster Wheel

When the topic of stunts came up, Asa and Hailee told us a bit more about something we'd been allowed to peek at during the production art tour: the hamster wheel. In the video we'd seen, the two of them were strapped face-to-face in a spinning device, flipping over and over at a speed that would have made the most seasoned stuntman nervous.

"It felt a lot faster than it looked," Asa insisted. "It might have been going really slow but we were travelling a hundred miles an hour."

"It's really funny," laughed Hailee, "Because I mean, working with the stunt coordinator, Garrett Warren, it's been... he's so passionate about what he does and it makes it that much more fun for us. You know, he has something new he's like, 'Hey guys, let's check this out, let's try this!' and if something doesn't work he's like 'Forget it, let's do something else' and he's, you know, always up for new things and new challenges but um... the hamster wheel is one that we did where, I mean, we couldn't even look at each other with a straight face 'cause our helmets were super tight and once we were upside down it like kind of…"

"Made us look… sort of hamsterish. Hence the name."

Since most of us were there representing one fan outlet or another, we asked Asa and Hailee if it was more difficult working on a movie that has such a huge fanbase -- does it put pressure on them in any way? Surprisingly, neither of them thought it did.

"I don't feel that, personally," Hailee explained, pausing a moment. "I think, speaking for myself and I think the others could agree, coming onto a project that does have such a huge fanbase that, you know, I found that I'm a fan of it in general... kind of coming on and being able to be a part of it is just kind of an honor rather than feeling the pressure of it."

Asa definitely agreed. "Yeah, I mean, totally. It's an amazing opportunity to be on this and it's been an amazing experience. But there is a massive fan base for this and, well, as soon as I got the part one of the things I told my mom was... one of the main scenes I want to do in this is still appeal to the massive cult that already follows Ender's Game and so... that was what I was thinking about when I was doing the role."

Before we had stopped in to chat with the cast, we were speaking to stunt director Garrett Warren -- in an interview you'll read tomorrow -- and he had gushed excitedly over the infamous shower scene. When asked, Asa admitted it's going to be pretty epic.

"It was intense. It's an amazing scene, from what I've seen of it at least. And yeah, it was one of the first scenes I had filmed with Moises and we were both really excited about it. Like at the hotel we both were like wondering, 'Am I going to do a back flip over you or something?' And of course it was more realistic than that but we had our fantasies about how epic it would be. And of course there's the part about … it was difficult to shoot because they could never show me naked, so they had to always shoot me from the waist up. But yeah, it was an amazing scene."

--

Gavin Hood's arrival signaled a change in conversation and a few minutes later, both Asa and Hailee were called back to set and a troop of boys wandered in: Suraj Partha, Conor Carroll, Khylin Rhambo, Aramis Knight -- with a guest appearance by Stilson actor Caleb Thaggard.

The first question for the group was well-suited to a bunch of teenage boys growing up in the 21st century: What piece of advanced technology used in Ender's futuristic world would they love to see available today?

"I think the little mouse for our computers that we saw today," Aramis pipped up. "They are incredible. It's cool how just a little device this big... they compacted the keyboard into it and the little scrolly thing and the joystick. It's so cool."

Khylin went for a more obvious choice: the flash gun.

"You'd need the flash SUIT with that, too."

"Ah yeah, that's true," Khylin winced.

Set Shenanigans

Throw together scores of teenagers, long days, and a dash of Gavin Hood and you are sure to occasionally run into mischief. And when we asked the boys if there had been any silly moments on set, they definitely did not disappoint.

© Ender News

"I know a really good one," grinned Conor. "This is a really long story but I'll try to keep it short. It was doing one scene where I think Ender enters the battle and Fly falls off and breaks his leg. And it was this one person who works on the movie's birthday and I don't know why but he dressed up like an enormous bunny. And so Gavin said, 'Okay, great, nice shot everyone. Let's do one more take.' So we were all like getting ready and the man in the bunny suit came in, 'All right everyone, time to go into space!' Everyone laughed so unbelievably hard."

"That was a good one," Aramis agreed. "I was like, 'Should I go with it?'"

"Donnie Darko. You guys can see him too, right?"

What about when they weren't filming or in between takes?

"I've been learning how to beat-box from Asa," grinned Suraj.

"And he's RIDICULOUS at it," Aramis assured us. "I've been teaching these guys a little bit about basketball. We've been doing that a little bit."

But not everything they did between takes was just for fun - they also admitted that they liked to spend time getting revved up and ready for Battle as a group and had come up with a way to really get blood flowing.

"Yeah, when we gotta get pumped, ready for battle, right before they say "action!" we start doing chants and we're like stomping. It's like a football team," Khylin nodded. "It's super cool though, it gets you in the moment."

Stunts

Once the boys were pumped and ready to go, the real work started. Who needs stunt doubles when you have a bunch of young, energetic teenagers to work with? It was really surprising to hear from the cast how many of the stunts they actually pulled off on their own - and of course they all had their favorites.

© Summit Entertainment

Khylin loved the first time they got to run and jump into the Battle Room. They put the boys on a zip line and told them to go for it. "Let go. Go as fast as you want, run, whatever you want to do and like if you want to flip or you just jump out…" It's easy to imagine the actors zipping down the huge hall at the old NASA facility, each trying to outdo the other and come up with the most outrageous null-gravity move.

"I know one scene that… Bean definitely knows this... and it's probably one of his and one of my favorite scenes, too," Conor leaned over to gesture at Aramis a few seats away. "We were on the zipline and he's laying face-down on one of the windows looking out and I grab his leg and he kicks me and I have to do a couple somersaults in space. It was one of the hardest scenes I had ever done cause like my gun kept dropping or I didn't spin enough times or I spun to the side."

"And I told him if I had any anger towards him, I was going to let it out in that scene. I really went for it. I kicked him, I kicked him. It felt really great," Aramis grinned.

But what about Stilson? Did Caleb Thaggard get to try out any of the wirework even though his character never quite makes it to Battle School?

"Well, with these guys telling me how much those things hurt, I really didn't…" he admitted as the room exploded in laughter. "'You wanna try??' 'No, no I'm fine, man. I'll be an Earth brat. I'm good. I'm chillin' on Earth.' But yeah, it was still really, really fun."

© Summit Entertainment

While Caleb wasn't required to strap himself into a harness and pretend to be weightless, he did have to go through a bit of the martial arts and military training. Why? As we saw last week in a newly released still, Ender's school on Earth is run by the International Fleet.

"I got to do some of that. I have a new respect for every single one of them. The stuff they had to do every day... cause, you know, at first I only had to do like marching and you know, if I messed up with that, all I had to do was push-ups. These dudes had to do push-ups, sit-ups, sparring. I was like, 'All right, yeah, you guys are beastly.'"

The Buggers

So, Battle School is breath-taking and the null-gravity stunt work should be incredible. But there's one question that's still on everyone's mind: What do the Formics look like? It appears the studio wants to leave this reveal for the big screen;  there hasn't been any sign of the aliens in the trailers and it's very unlikely they come out with a Bugger Drone #24 character poster before the film hits theaters in November.

They did, however, give us a peak at the Formic imagery last May and the Buggers were impressive -- and terrifying. But what did the boys think the first time they had a chance to check them out?

"The first time I think all of us saw them, it was just a picture, right? They just look like really giant ants." Aramis explained, using his hands to to give us a better visual. "Giant ants with claws and teeth and it shows like everything, like the science, crazy names on all of them, the anatomy, muscular system. It's crazy."

"I had two impressions when I first saw them. The first was, 'Oh my god, I can't believe they look like this!' I always thought they were like humanoid, almost. Like they'd walk on two legs. My second thought was, 'I don't wanna be one of them cause I'd have to be with other Formics all the time,' Conor admitted, to huge laughter and agreement from his castmates. "That's like another reason why I don't want to be like... a spider or something, being around spiders all the time."

Suraj, however, pointed out that the Formics weren't entirely frightening. "I think the artists have done a good job, though, of... I mean, there is sort of a beauty to them as well. You're supposed to be grossed out by them but they've done a good job with the color, really making them creatures that, once you get to know them, you would love them and you'd want to live in peace with them. It's really interesting."

"The Formics are supposed to be this intelligent adversary," Caleb agreed, "One of the things I think they did with the design was really... the facial structure itself kind of had expression and an intelligence to it. So you were like, 'Yeah, okay, I could see how this thing would kick our butts in a space battle.' They just looked advanced, look like a threat."

Flash Suits

When we asked the boys about their favorite costume, there was a bit of confusion on our side of the room. Several of the boys shuffled a bit in their seats and at least one of them winced.

© Ender News

"Favorite looking?" Suraj tentatively asked.

"Yeah, my favorite looking is the flash suits," Khylin said, to the agreement of his friends.

It was when we asked if the suits were comfortable that we found out why they acting strangely. No. No, they were not.

"I'm glad we said favorite looking," Aramis shot at Khylin, who grinned and replied, "My favorite one is the pajamas."

Suraj laughed. "Yeah, the flash suits were definitely... they looked really good on camera. And one of the funniest things is that in the dormitories we have all the flash suits and everything. We're supposed to get dressed really quickly and run over to the Battle Room. And I don't think that anyone is ever going to realize that to get these things on we had like 4 people on us tugging at the pants, trying to get the jacket over, and trying to zip this up so this is…"

"IT DOESN'T FIT, IT DOESN'T. NEW ZIPPER, NEW ZIPPER," Aramis reenacted. "I remember the first time and all of us tried it on at the same time and I remember all of us were like, 'Yeah! We can do this!'  Fifteen minutes later: 'I can't do this.' Because, it's not like it's really like... you can move, it just gets tough to breathe after a while because it's tight and so well-fitted. And it also gets hot cause there were at least nine layers, at least."

In our interview with costume designer Christine Bieselin Clark which we released Friday, she admitted that they had fashioned the flash suits with wiggle room so that the actors could grow and not necessarily need a new one. But with all the working-out they were doing, the form-fitted suits did occasionally get a bit snug.

"When we got our fitting, they measured us and everything and then it fit me perfectly. And then once we went to training doing like push-ups and sit-ups and stuff, I'd put it on, the same suit, and I almost fainted. It felt like I was getting hugged by Nonso!" Khylin laughed. "It was crazy tight, but it got so much better after they tailored it. And it wasn't as bad as we were making it sound. It's definitely going to look really good on camera."

Pop Tarts

The conversation had slowly begun to dwindle at this point. The boys praised Moises Arias's intense work-out ethic, Nonso laughingly explained why yelling at the kids was a fun sort of therapy for him, and Khylin gave us the low-down on his new show, The First Family. There was a long pause, and I jokingly, brought the conversation back around to something we had been talking about earlier with the producers.

"We're going to start talking about Pop Tarts again in a minute."

"You guys talked about Pop Tarts? Where was I?"

"What? I love Pop Tarts."

"The strawberry kind with like the frosting and the …"

"I have a whole life story on Pop Tarts. At home there are these Pop Tarts and they are blue and drizzled with purple and they're like Wild Berry. At home, they don't make them! They don't make them in LA."

Check out the Pop Tart audio below:



--

Coming tomorrow: Interview with stunt coordinator Garrett Warren, the set designers, and Sir Ben Kingsley!

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Countdown: 60 Days to Go - Symphony

Gavin Hood said it was watching Gustavo Dudamel lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra during a show in L.A.'s Disney Hall that inspired him to have Ender conduct his team of pilots as if he were guiding them through a prestissimo symphony — front and center, orchestrating everyone's movements in harmony.

Source: LA Times

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