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ruperts_babe · #1 (**permalink**) 05-22-2004, 05:53 AM

[img]http://www.snitchseeker.com/images/news/alfonso_cuaron_80.jpg' align='middle'> Alfonso taught Dan to cry on cue -

Summary:
During filming of POA, Alfonso Cuaron managed to make Dan cry on cue

Article:

Thanks to Wizardnews for the link

Quote:

WHAT do you do to a 13-year-old wizard to make him cry? Do you take his wand off him or just call him a squib and be done with it?

For Alfonso Cuaron, who replaces Chris Columbus as director, working out how to get Daniel Radcliffe to connect with the darker themes for the third Harry Potter movie was just one of the challenges he faced.

When Cuaron was first approached to replace Columbus, who wanted to take a back-seat role after churning out back-to-back magical blockbusters, he had never read a Harry Potter novel nor seen a Harry Potter movie.

And entering the world in which wizards rule and quidditch is the major sport must have taken some adjustment, particularly given Cuaron went to work on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban fresh from directing the rather raunchy Y Tu Mama Tambien.

"I thought it was going to be very hard," Cuaron, who was chosen to helm the new Potter film because of the way he translated the book A Little Princess into a film, says in an interview recently published in Fantasy World magazine.

"I don't want people to go to the third movie and feel they're in an alien world.

"They have to believe they're in the same universe, so it has to be recognisable enough but, at the same time, I wanted to have fun adding to it on my own."

Fans of the boy wizard wonder have a lot to look forward to when the next instalment in the Harry Potter movies is released in Australia on June 10.

This is the movie with which the Harry Potter series starts to get a little darker and a little more real.

One of the comments many fans have made just from seeing the trailer for the new film is that the three main stars – Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) – look more like average kids and less like figures of fantasy.

One of the obvious differences is the way the characters spend more time getting around in jeans and sneakers rather than in their school gowns.

Cuaron also has faced the challenge of making a film with a twist in the tale that is known by most people before the movie starts.

As fans of the book already know, Prisoner of Azkaban sees Harry back at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for his third year. But it's hard to concentrate on his lessons when he finds out that mass murderer Sirius Black (a key figure in the Potter saga who is played by Gary Oldman) has escaped from prison, and is after Harry.

Everything about this film is bigger. Firstly, the child stars seem to have been hit with a growth spell.

Columbus has complained in the past about the trouble with working with kids.

"The drawback is you can't stop the ageing process, so there's no chance of a big break between (making) the films," he says.

"And you can't shoot all the films simultaneously, like The Lord of the Rings, because you need the kids to look a little older each time."

The cast is a little bigger too. There's a new Dumbledore, with Michael Gambon taking over from the late Richard Harris, the new Defence of the Dark Arts teacher Professor Lupin (David Thewlis) who has a connection with Black and his own dark secret, and Emma Thompson who produces prophecies by the bucketload as Professor Trelawney and takes over the role of cast comedian performed by her former husband, Kenneth Branagh, in the previous film.

Along with new people, this movie introduces some key creatures to the saga, including a werewolf, hippogriffs (part horse, part bird) and dementors.

To create the creepy dementors, who float around the place trying to suck the happiness out of your soul, Cuaron first called in puppeteer Basil Twist to build puppets that floated along in an underwater set. The computer animators then based their work on those puppets.

Then there's the cinematography, which also will look a little bigger. Columbus refers to the first two films as being acting school for the young cast, saying that he went for lots of close-ups because it was too difficult to get the untrained actors to make it through a scene without mistakes.

Now that they have a few years of performing behind them, Cuaron has been able to go for wider shots in which the scene plays out in full.

Cuaron has talked about the experience of directing a Potter film as positive, but exhausting. So exhausting that he opted out of the fourth Potter film, that is currently being filmed under the direction of Mike Newell (Mona Lisa Smile).

As to how to make a wizard cry, Cuaron didn't opt for wand stealing or for suggesting someone was a squib without magical powers.

Instead, he prepared the main actors by showing them other films of teenage angst, such as Francois Truffaut's rather intense 1959 film The 400 Blows, and getting Radcliffe, Watson and Grint to write a first-person biography of the character they were playing, interweaving emotions and experiences from their own life.

When it came time for Radcliffe to cry on command for the first time, Cuaron says in an interview in Premiere magazine that he spent a long time building his young star up to an emotional crisis before calling action.

"I thought 'Oh, man, each time we have to have an emotional thing, we have to do all this work'," he says.

"No – next time I see Dan in his little corner, talking to himself. He learnt how to go through his own process. He's a sponge."

If you want to get a 13-year-old wizard to cry, all you've got to do is ask.

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Aris · 05-22-2004, 06:13 AM

LOL- That is cool and Crazy! I can do it too

05-22-2004, 06:20 AM

Whoa! :/

HermioneG2010 · 05-22-2004, 06:22 AM

Now there's something you don't hear or see evryday...

Well, can't wait for the next movie to see it all happen!

Funkadelic · 05-22-2004, 06:23 AM

Go Dan. Being able to just learn on the spot is a fantastic quality... :flowersmile: Kudos! I dunno what that means lol

HermioneG2010 · 05-22-2004, 06:26 AM

Well, it takes practice. Sometimes you have to think of a sad thing ahead of time while you're filming so then when the time is right you can cry, at least, that's what I thought they did.

But now we know that that isn't right!

But still, it's really something neat and odd at the same time....

Funkadelic · 05-22-2004, 06:29 AM

The Lip Quiver always works for me lol...or you can tighten your throat...or just concentrate on the character's feelings and how you think they'd react to the situation...

MioneAlterEgo · 05-22-2004, 06:36 AM

It takes *a lot* of focus to be able to cry on cue like that. I'm impressed with any actor that age who has that kind of focus. If Alfonso was able to get Dan to a place where he could do it on his own, that's pretty awesome.

For crying on-cue, some people work inside-out (get the inner emotion and the resulting action--crying or whatever--will come). Some people work outside-in (like Funkadelic said, a lip quiver, tightening the throat or whatnot, and the emotion will occur as a result). I'm an inside-out person, generally; I have to really focus in on the character's emotions and putting myself into that mindset, and it sometimes takes a while. I wish I could cry on cue like that!

05-22-2004, 06:39 AM

Wow! That's great! I wonder if I can do that....

Funkadelic · 05-22-2004, 06:58 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by MioneAlterEgo@May 22 2004, 12:10 AM
It takes *a lot* of focus to be able to cry on cue like that. I'm impressed with any actor that age who has that kind of focus. If Alfonso was able to get Dan to a place where he could do it on his own, that's pretty awesome.

For crying on-cue, some people work inside-out (get the inner emotion and the resulting action--crying or whatever--will come). Some people work outside-in (like Funkadelic said, a lip quiver, tightening the throat or whatnot, and the emotion will occur as a result). I'm an inside-out person, generally; I have to really focus in on the character's emotions and putting myself into that mindset, and it sometimes takes a while. I wish I could cry on cue like that!

Exactly! lol I'm kinda in-between...I can cry on cue, but I never know how it looks or it looks believeable enough because I had to teach myself lol but if you get in touch with the character and pretty much know how they'd react to most things then I think it'd be rather easy to cry on cue and Dan seems to be very in touch with Harry (Okay, here I am talking like I know what I'm talking about

)

05-22-2004, 07:00 AM

Thats how you know he is a great actor being able to cry on demand...makes me want to cry now lol j/k

Dawn Bloom · 05-22-2004, 08:04 AM

He still didn't really say how he makes him weep.

funky monkey · 05-22-2004, 08:17 AM

ha ha ... a sponge.. sorry, but thats a funny way of putting it...lol

Pig_Widgeon · 05-22-2004, 09:07 AM

I think that real cool ..... to be able to cry on command .....

But dont ya think that they'll have some kind of side effect form all of this ...... ?

Going nuts perhaps ...

harryluva · 05-22-2004, 09:40 AM

cool......i read somewhere that laughing was harder than cryin~lol!!!

fallenangel2005 · 05-22-2004, 12:19 PM

OKAY cool but wiered but true

Dan's_Girl · 05-22-2004, 01:24 PM

If I need to cry, I just tell lies to myself, and convince myselfthat I'm all alone. Then I remember all the darker points in my life.

But it does not do to dwell on the past...

Go Daniel Radcliffe!!