Frankenstein: The Anatomy Lesson (2025) Movie Script
[man] The great thing about art
is that you are creating
something that is gonna stay there
forever.
It's very important that everything
is accurate and perfect,
'cause people come to expect
a handmade movie
when you go to an epic like this.
I thought it's gonna be
an extraordinary process,
and it has been.
Victor!
Certain stories become part of your DNA.
If you're religious,
you get them from the Bible.
If you love fairy tales,
you get them from the fables or parables.
Two of the closest things to me
are Pinocchio and Frankenstein.
The theme of father and sons
and the fracturing of a human being
is a big theme for him.
They both are stories
about "abnormal kids,"
born to fathers
that are disappointed in a way.
Say one word.
One word more. Anything.
It's Guillermo's take on it.
He's been thinking about it
for a long time.
Ever since he was a small child,
this has been a bucket list project
for him that he's always wanted to do,
and he felt like he was ready
as a filmmaker to make it.
Yes, yes. That's you.
[Guillermo] I've lived with
Mary Shelley's creation all of my life,
but I wanted to make it my own.
Through the years, I decided
to make it a he said, she said.
The first part of the movie
is told from the point of view
of the scientist, Victor.
Trickery?
Are you sure?
[crowd murmuring]
That is not trickery. That is a decision.
Motor coordination between
the eye of one dead man
and the arm of another.
Release now.
Please.
"Please" always helps.
[man] There's an element of uncertainty,
what can be trusted of Victor's story.
"Is there really a creature?"
is the question.
Whether you believe me or not
[shuddering] it will come back.
[man 2] That's sort of
the purpose of a monster
that comes from this kind of literature,
is to make us question our humanity
and turn a mirror back onto the world.
I made you well.
I need you to make a companion for me.
One like me.
[Guillermo] The second part of the movie
is like when your kids come to you
and say, "Here's what you did wrong,"
and you have an epiphany.
So it's the prodigal father, I called it,
getting the son
to tell him what he did wrong.
[woman] It's a story
about this brilliant scientist
who was able to create life.
But it's also about so many other things.
There's themes of grief and of fathers
and sons and loneliness and isolation
and that need to belong
and that need for love.
[man] For Guillermo, it was
"How do those things
all dovetail together?"
And the thing that he did so brilliantly
is he really gave you space
to not judge either story
but to actually understand each story,
to be able to tell the full breadth
of what the book does,
'cause it was really important for him
to tell the monster's story as well.
[groaning]
I will make you bleed.
-I will make you humble.
-[groaning]
Part of the appeal of the book
is that it's like a teenager
that asks too many questions
and you get irritated
'cause they're very smart.
The book has that fidgety sort of energy.
It wants to question capitalism.
It wants to question, '"Who am I?"
"Why am I here? Why did God send me?"
"What is my purpose? What is the world?"
And I wanted to capture that.
I want to know who I am.
Guillermo has embraced those questions
without necessarily feeling the need
to provide a definitive answer.
-I fear you, Victor.
-No, no
I always have.
Every ounce of madness and destruction.
[crying]
You are the monster.
[man] Guillermo worked out a way
to stay true to the original novel,
but also putting in
his own handwriting, his own style,
his own way of showing emotions,
showing life.
[breathing heavily]
[Jacob] The film is a dedication
to the metaphysical
and Gothic and otherworldly,
but also very much of this world.
He takes the things
that we can't conceive,
these images from our subconscious,
and he brings them back,
and he makes them palatable
for us to understand.
[Guillermo] I tried to absorb the style
of dialogue and the themes,
so a lot of the dialogue
is entirely original,
but it has the patois and the rhythms
of Mary Shelley's from the book.
Some of what I will tell you is fact.
[groans]
Some is not, but it is all true.
The way fiction and the reality
of the novel merged
is just amazing.
[dramatic music playing]
[man] The structure's basically intact.
And there's a chute going from top,
right to the bottom.
I can arrange for your belongings.
What Guillermo tends to do
is write for actors,
so he wrote the first draft
with some of these actors in mind.
Certainly with Oscar in mind.
I didn't even really know
that Frankenstein was something
that was simmering for him and
I sat at his house, at his amazing house,
full of books and, you know,
oddities and art,
and we just started talking.
We talk about our fathers
and we talk about being fathers,
and we talked very sincerely.
And he just said,
"Heck, you need to play Victor."
But I said you have to be not afraid
of playing the main character
which becomes the villain.
He just said the good and the evil
are sides of the same thing,
and they're constantly
flipping back and forth.
No, don't touch me!
Don't ever touch me!
I am more attracted to making movies
about people that are full of villainy,
because ultimately it's a more real way
of seeing the world.
Jacob came to be cast about nine weeks
before we started shooting.
When that happened, I said,
"Anything that goes 'wrong' in this movie
is gonna go right."
I'm gonna listen to the movie."
The idea on set he had every day
was that the movie
will reject what it doesn't want,
and it will keep what it wants.
We're just here as, like, fans
and as lovers of this thing,
and the movie is gonna tell us.
Where would be a good mark?
For the crossing?
Jacob and I spoke in preproduction a lot,
but then very little.
One or two takes in, I printed,
'cause he was exactly what needed to be
and there was not many repetitions.
He's an excellent actor.
[Oscar] I was really impressed
at what a pro he is.
For someone that's so young
and has to deal with
10, 12 hours of makeup,
getting called in
at 2:00 in the morning,
Jacob embodied it
with such poise and commitment.
And you can even go like this
and you leave this hand there,
-you feel the name
-Yeah.
and then you say it.
With The Creature,
I needed somebody that sees promise.
Mia Goth gave me that.
[Miles] Mia is a very instinctual actor.
She's really able to respond
on the fly, kind of intuitively.
[Guillermo] She's one of the most
real actors I've ever worked with.
I learned to shoot her the way
she needed to be shot,
to give her spontaneity.
Elizabeth.
I must confess something to you.
I have a belief in the marvelous
and so do you.
There is a bond between us.
Can you feel it?
An almost physical one.
I truly believe it to be something else.
Believing something does not make it true.
I figured out that
that's exactly how Elizabeth would feel.
However it is you feel on the day,
let that inform whatever it is
the scene wants to be.
-William.
-Victor.
-Look at you.
-[laughs]
[William] May I introduce
the woman I'm to marry?
Lady Elizabeth Harlander.
There is a big change from the novel,
and any adaptation of Frankenstein,
because Elizabeth is William's fiance.
[Scott] Felix is William,
who is Victor's younger brother.
Guillermo really wanted
to create that dynamic
so you could understand Victor's pain.
He is the guy that would
love for his brother to love him.
[Felix] Victor Frankenstein's brother
doesn't really appear in the novel.
It's a 5-year-old child, and that's it.
When I read the script, I nearly fainted,
because Guillermo blew up
the whole role to something
that is actually quite considerable.
If I did my job right,
you will feel like that's the way it was,
but it's not at all.
William was a fully-developed character,
something I've experienced very rarely.
[Harlander] I have secured
William's service
for the duration of the project.
Anything you need or want
shall be granted.
[Miles] There was no one ever considered
for the role of Harlander
other than Christoph.
He had that gravitas
that you really need for that role.
I wanted him to be an antagonist
and a victim at the same time.
Guillermo was very adamant about that
he needs that character
and what he needs it for.
That's already a pretty firm basis
for what I do.
He played it very charming
and full of wit.
But when he reveals what his real motive
is for financing the experiments
I want to be placed
in this new perfect body.
I find it very moving.
Let's lower the dummy slowly.
[man] Lower the dummy. Copy that.
All right. Let's shoot it.
Ready, and action.
[man] Three, two, one, go.
[thuds]
[Miles] Guillermo has generally said
there are four legs to the table.
Production design, cinematography,
costumes, makeup and hair.
And they're all essentially one thing.
Call them all production design.
In that way, those four areas
have to be completely coordinated.
[Guillermo] Basically, a director
prepares a whole meal,
and those that make it with him
are also the guests.
And if you seat that table properly,
with Mike, with Kate,
with Tamara, with Dan Laustsen,
it's a great meal.
Wardrobe is set,
set construction is wardrobe.
Cinematography is set construction.
Action.
The only role of the director
is directing all those elements
to tell the same story.
-A little more of the mushy brains.
-[man] Yeah.
[Miles] When we've got
the same people doing it
over the course of a number of films,
that all gets refined.
Those trust relationships
are completely defined,
communication is very, very clear.
That's part of the secret sauce.
Little Laustsen.
Like them with the hat or no?
Every day I meet with everyone,
and every day I tell them
what I'm changing.
There's not a single thing
that means nothing.
Everything means everything.
That symphonic approach fuses everything.
The cinematography,
the wardrobe and the set design.
[Mia] There are very few filmmakers
who actually are capable
of creating worlds,
that are able to operate
at such a scale and execute such scope.
[Felix] Guillermo really puts
all of his heart into this film
that you can feel it.
He really put something together
that is an experience
once in a lifetime, I think.
[Oscar] Everything
had a practical quality,
and it speaks to a type of film
that is an endangered species, I'd say.
I'm not sure how many more
of those there's gonna be.
[Guillermo] There are huge sets,
huge props, complex wardrobe.
I wanted the movie
to test the capabilities
of every single craft in movie-making.
There. There.
[gasps]
[dramatic music playing]
[Guillermo] There are three phases
to image creation.
At first, I want to see what you think,
and then I tell you what I'm thinking.
Then it becomes a dialogue.
And then the final thing
is coordinating all that
between all the departments
so that the image feels like
everything is working together.
We do a huge mood board.
We say, "These are the colors
that are coding the movie."
The greens should be only for Elizabeth.
The blues should be Harlander
and the brother and the father.
The red is only for the mother and Victor.
And then when we have all these documents,
we have a dialogue.
And Kate's wardrobe captures that.
Guillermo said to me,
"I don't want fusty old period for this."
"You know, it needs to be of its own."
At the very beginning of a film,
I always respond to the script
with a response
in terms of images and a mood board,
and I've used this
for discussions with Guillermo.
It gives me a map,
and it gives the team a feel
for fabrics and colors
and things to respond to as well.
I wanted to make the costumes feel modern.
I didn't want you to see
a pastel-colored period,
because I wanted Victor
to be dressed like Mick Jagger.
[Oscar] I remember
first seeing Kate's drawings
with different ideas
taken from pictures off the Internet,
kind of these strange amalgams,
and seeing these incredible costumes.
And so you kind of come in
and I put these things on and
see what they feel like
and try to pretend
a little bit that I belong.
That's the first feeling.
You know, just approaching it.
As we gather research,
many drawings are made.
I think we've got hundreds
of drawings of Victor.
And then one day
Guillermo's walking casually past.
He went,
"Well, that's my Victor right there."
And then we had to-- Went with that one,
and that developed
into fittings with Oscar
and became the layered wardrobe
that he has now.
[Oscar] One of the first things
that happens with characters
is the initial questions.
"What are the elements of this guy?"
"Is he trying to look a certain way?"
"Is he not? Is he trying to provoke?"
"How does that translate
into how the story progresses
and what happens
when he has a little bit more money?"
What does he put on?"
The costume fitting started
to be a place to start collaborating
and realizing we're actually
building this character together,
especially when we got
to the creation of The Creature,
and the way he takes off pieces
or adds pieces,
and what is that saying
about his inner life?
I got so much information from that.
[Kate] Mike had done a couple
of early maquettes for The Creature
which were so beautiful,
you know, with all those beautiful lines
and that pinky-red running through it,
and that starts informing me
about how I can utilize those things
within the clothes or costume.
I talked with Kate to see
what would emphasize this Creature,
his length and his height
and his elegance.
And Kate is a master
at this type of character.
So the costume was reflecting
The Creature's look as well.
[Kate] A simple coat has taken
quite a few weeks of R&D.
So the idea
was The Creature finds his coat
in an old burial ground
of soldiers from the Crimean War.
So we thought
it was a beautiful idea to
have the imprint
of the skeletons on the coat,
so we created sort of spines and things.
The evolution of this coat goes through
a lot of stages and transitions,
with the journey to the Arctic
and his visit to the mill.
So every time he's in an environment,
the qualities of his garment change.
-We can play with it a bit more.
-Yeah. I would
-I would leave only the eyes.
-Okay.
It's interesting, 'cause we did
months and months of concept work,
and then Guillermo is improvising
all the time through the process.
So, your actor comes and it's like you've
almost got to let go and see what falls.
A lot of your job
is sort of reacting to things,
to support what's happening on set.
There's huge collaboration in that.
And not to mention,
Mia is part of that collaboration as well.
[Mia] We had so many costume fittings.
The level of craftsmanship
is unparalleled.
I've never experienced
anything quite like it.
I was always looking forward to my fitting
'cause I was always able
to get a little bit more information
and to see how Kate was
looking at the story as a whole and
and my relation to other characters
and how the dress was a language for that.
[Kate] It's a question
about Elizabeth's environment
and the books that she loves and nature,
and how do we incorporate that
into her clothing to make it unique?
We took traditional garments
like a cape, shawl,
pelerine of the period
that responded
to sort of the beetle and moth imagery
that Guillermo likes to use,
and we developed these
into sort of fractal body patterns.
When you look at beetles and things,
their patterns are so big.
But then we had to sort of work out
how we could apply patterns
or delicate layers,
and we developed this artwork
that took months of fractal patterns
and mixing blood cells
and malachites and that together
which is all part of this nod
to the themes of nature.
We've also been playing
with the idea of X-rays,
and we've been developing this
on tools and things like that
to play with overlays
so it's not so flat and saturated.
So we've been trying
to capture that with Mia's clothing.
[Guillermo] And action.
[Kate] There's a dress for
a moment on the heath
with her and Victor
in his full seduction mode,
and we're looking
at these beautiful stones
that art department have created.
They have these swirling patterns in them.
[woman] Kate's done some incredible things
with taking patterns from our sets
and using them in the costumes.
[Guillermo] Kate knows that her wardrobe
is a piece of color,
a piece of shape
and a piece of information
and a piece of beauty within a set.
So Tamara and her, very important
that they have a dialogue together.
Tamara's great at sharing
every part of their process with us,
and so we look at the work they're doing
and we reflect her architecture
and things with our department.
[Guillermo] You don't feel wardrobe
pulling one way
and architecture pulling another.
These are not isolated ideas
that occur at the same time.
You're directing an opera,
and you're leaning
to the same emotional point.
[Kate] Guillermo's very clear,
as was Dan Laustsen, our DOP.
It was always how color was going to read,
because what you see to the naked eye
is not what you're reading on camera ever
with these cameras.
We do many, many tests
through digital cameras.
We got Dan to set up lighting.
[Dan] We are very much in control
of the color palette,
because otherwise it's changing
everybody else's work.
You know, if Kate is spending
a lot of time to find the green color
and we're just going to make it more blue,
the green is going to disappear.
[Guillermo] Dan and I talked about
the painterly color of the movie,
and we ended up with blue, white and gold
for the prologue and the epilogue.
Then the childhood
is black and white and red.
From then on,
you start adding more colors.
We talked a lot about how to light it
and how the set should look.
And, of course, all that is done
with the production designer, Tamara,
because to light it well is a teamwork.
[Tamara] There's an evolution in the lab,
through Dan's lighting.
He tells the story when it's fresh.
And the first time
that Victor's here, it's very bright,
and then it gets darker
and the storm comes,
and then there's lightning,
and then there's the moment of creation.
[Kate] Guillermo wanted
very saturated colors.
Elizabeth he wanted in the greens,
and Victor's embraced some of the reds.
And there's sort of
an interesting color palette together.
It reflects the colors
in the batteries and the lab,
so it's all a part of
that slightly psychedelic world.
[Mike] The color palette for The Creature
was to make this thing
that was pleasing to look at.
You know, there's beauty in ugliness.
[Guillermo] The makeup needs to tell you
that he's made of pieces.
Why is he made of pieces?
That's one thing I wanted to know,
because, really,
if you are Victor Frankenstein,
you go to a cemetery, you grab a body,
you grab a hand, you grab an arm.
That's it. It's made of three pieces.
But if they give you
the pieces of a battlefield,
then that explains why he's
putting it together like a jigsaw puzzle.
So the makeup needed to reflect that,
but have a beauty.
Mike and I are Frankenstein-heads.
I have a whole room
dedicated to Frankenstein.
Mike builds the things that are in my room
for Frankenstein,
and we are groupies.
[Jacob] Michael loves Frankenstein
as much as Guillermo.
When he saw Boris Karloff on screen
for the first time, it changed his life.
[Mike] I had to figure out
what Guillermo wanted.
You know, I can help
push his ideas further,
but it has to be about what he wants
and what his movie is about.
And what I got was,
people see monsters
in beautiful things sometimes,
and we didn't have
to do this ogre of a creature.
We didn't want all
these garish wounds and stitching.
So I said, "Well, okay.
This is Victor's first go at this."
So, you know, a dressmaker can't make
the perfect dress the first time.
There's a lot more stitches
and patching going on.
The second one would be a lot better.
But his first one, to me--
I thought, "Okay. You've got
to make sense of these scars."
"So maybe they're access points,
maybe they're points he went in,
"changed the muscle
and then figured, 'That's not right.'"
"It's not working. I can improve that,"
then went back in again.
Victor Frankenstein is not a butcher.
He's trying to make the perfect man.
At the end of the day,
this is a man brought back from the dead,
but it doesn't mean
that he can't look beautiful.
So I just played around
with colors and forms and shapes
that would make
the actor's body feel powerful.
-[screaming]
-[metal clanging]
Victor!
And developed it
further and further from there.
Yeah. Something. He was
To be a part of To be a part of
[Guillermo] So, I called Jacob,
and immediately,
we started talking about the monster.
[Jacob] When we started, he just said,
"You have to leave the world behind."
"Emotionally, you have
to close your ears off
and close your nostrils off
and change the way that you see things
to be able to shift
into this kind of original being."
[Guillermo] I said
the hard thing to do is the zero.
I said, "If you want
to study anyone, study your dog."
You know, your dog can be there.
If it needs to attack something,
the dog attacks
[bones breaking]
[screaming and growling]
and then sit by you
like he's been there all day.
You are my friend.
[Jacob] I studied butoh,
which is sort of like the dance
of re-animating a corpse,
and that was really helpful in terms
of isolating different parts of your body
and thinking about movement
in a different way.
[Mike] Jacob is a really
well-proportioned man,
so it was ideal,
and I could see that in his frame.
But also, he had
an almost panther-like grace
in his body and his movements.
I think he was born to do this.
[Guillermo] And action.
[The Creature grunting]
Mike and I agreed on using
as much of the body of Jacob as we could,
because that gives him more expressiveness
and more reality.
This is the very first time
we applied the makeup to Jacob
back in Los Angeles.
It was the first application
we ever did on him,
and then the next application
was the first day on set.
[woman] It's a tag-team effort.
There's a bunch of us,
and we all swarm Jacob at once.
First we start on his head,
then we slowly move down
and he's encased in prosthetics.
[Jacob] It was totally consuming
because I would sit in the makeup chair
for ten hours,
and sort of lose my humanity,
and your skin gets washed out
and covered with something,
and your face
and the structure changes,
and then you put the costume on,
and it's an immersive experience.
[Mike] The full body
is actually 42 pieces.
Normally, with a makeup like this,
you can overlap in appliance.
So you've got a little room for error.
But since I broke the makeup up
along the actual cuts and stitches,
where Frankenstein put him together
like a jigsaw puzzle,
which is very exacting,
it takes a little longer to apply,
but much more manmade-looking.
[Megan] Guillermo wanted us
to stay away from jet-black hair,
so we have more of a brown, layered,
multi-colored, darker version.
And I believe it was his idea
to have the one shock lock,
'cause obviously it's cool,
but also it shows that he's distinctly
made up of different people.
[Jacob] All I needed to be was
the sort of perfect still canvas
for him to paint life onto.
So I just wanted to be as calm
and as respectful of his process
as I could be,
because he's genuinely
one of the finest artists
I've ever encountered.
[Oscar] I think what's amazing is that
the descriptions in the book come to life,
and it's not the one
that we normally associate.
[man speaking indistinctly]
If you can-- If you can go up here,
it would be nice.
I was taken aback by it because I had
this idea of what The Creature is like
in other iterations
of Frankenstein that I've seen.
But what I really loved and appreciated
is kind of how it's scaled back
in a way a little bit.
There's a purity to it.
[Oscar] The way Jacob embodies him,
there's so much grace,
and what continues to happen
throughout the story
affects the way his body becomes stronger
and more defensive,
and then eventually into more offensive.
Stay back!
[man screaming]
[Mike] So we did make some replicas
of Jacob as The Creature.
One was a dissection body.
So where we see
these pieces being put together,
where, you know, the knee will go into
a new knee socket that gets screwed in.
The section of the brain comes out
so you can see inside the head.
You know, a new heart,
and see where Victor is operating
and putting
this piecemeal creature together.
The other one we have is
when The Creature's raised up on
the Y-frame for his birthing scene,
obviously, we couldn't leave an actor
stood up there all day in this pose,
so we made a full six-foot-five replica
of Jacob in the makeup for that scene.
Being a Frankenstein movie,
there's a lot of body parts,
there's a lot of corpses.
[Guillermo] I wanted to show the surgery
with anatomically correct butchery.
Because, ultimately,
to break a bone and reglue it
or to connect ligaments and tendons
is an incredibly messy business.
[Mike] So we have literally
dozens of bodies
and body parts on that set.
And I thought,
we'll just throw a few out there,
but no, no, Guillermo wanted them all.
[macabre music playing]
A little more out here.
-Yeah.
-Yeah.
[Guillermo] Most directors put their
office next to production and accounting.
But I am a pest.
I put my office in the art department.
And I demand to see props
two, three times a week.
A bad piece of set decoration
can pop you out of the movie.
'Cause it's not real anymore.
[Tamara] Early on,
we were sort of doing this dance
of "What is our take on
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
and what is Guillermo's vision of that?"
My tendency is to be really real
and accurate and historic,
and Guillermo is more into the fantasy
and pushing the vision.
That combination of our two visions
together really works.
At some point, Guillermo likes to go
from the very rough concept
to, like, fully 3D model.
It has to go from being rooted in fantasy
to a little more rooted in reality.
[woman] These models were basically
the first physical look at these sets
before construction goes in and actually
starts building the real thing.
They helped visualize
what will go on in that set.
The more tools that we can use
as an art department
to share with Guillermo and Dan Laustsen
to get the design ideas across the better.
And then there's always the question
of what's important for Guillermo
to have as a built set.
Victor's apartment was a must-build,
and one of my favorite sets.
It was scripted that it was this
impossibly cluttered and crooked set.
It was a really beautiful way
to start the movie,
'cause it was one of our first sets,
and it sort of set the tone
for what our Frankenstein would be.
[Felix] I remember I had my very first day
in the lab set.
Leaves are falling, water's trickling,
and you look up and you just lose it.
It's so big, it's so magnificent,
you can't believe
it is inside of a studio.
Well, the lab had to be spectacular.
I mean, it's the place
where the creation takes place,
and it's kind of the ultimate set.
[Oscar] The irony is the lab is so iconic
in people's heads,
from the different versions
that we've seen,
but it's not in the book.
Mary Shelley just skips over the how.
From the original movie and everything,
there's been a number of those labs,
but, of course, Guillermo,
he needs to top all of those.
I think we did that,
with a brilliant combination
of production design,
lighting, special effects.
You know, we're raining inside there
and we got lightning flying.
It was really something to see.
[Guillermo] I knew that I wanted to shoot
in the lab with big cranes,
with a lot of movement, like a concert.
So I knew I was gonna have
the cranes sweeping up and down.
It was a mixture between
a musician or a performer,
going from one synthesizer to the other
and having to run ten stories up
to call in the power of electricity
and come ten stories down.
And how frantic it is
when the storm finally comes.
[Oscar] Being there,
with those days of rain
and seeing the way it transforms
from just an empty, rundown water tower
to this mad lab,
with body parts
and blood strewn all over the place,
and at the center,
this crucified Creature,
it was astounding.
So we're sort of a third way
up in the tower,
which is really, in our world,
450 feet high.
So, below us is the lobby,
and then below that is The Creature's cell
and an ice chamber.
And then going up, this vortex goes
all the way to the very top of the tower,
where Victor has to attach
the lightning rod.
And then there's a chute that goes down
the middle that, by dropping things down
from one to the other,
we tied all of those things together.
[Tamara] Guillermo wanted
a tiled nightmare.
There was a very rudimentary sketch
early on of Elizabeth and The Creature
in front of a tiled circle,
and that was all he had.
So the idea of this is it's a vaulted
Gothic-style tiled nightmare of a place
that's underground, below the lab.
Some of the tile is real,
some of the tile we created.
It's a bit of a tricky set because
we had to burn the set, basically.
[Dan] What Tamara has done here
is a masterpiece.
You know, the set is so amazing.
But, of course, because
everything is shot on the crane,
all the walls have to fly
to be able to get the crane in.
[Guillermo] If you're building a set,
you want to move everything.
And it has to move within three minutes
of you saying, "Move that."
So anything that was there,
a steam machine, a column, an archway,
you need to remove it so the crane
can go into the set and shoot.
[Tamara] So, the set is supported
by the grid and the ceiling,
so we had to come up with
a solution for wilding columns.
So what we have
is a machine that comes in,
lifts this section up
and then this pulls out,
and then it drops down into position
so we can pull it out
so the camera can sweep through.
Our talented team put that together.
Genius.
I thought I would offer some help.
[laughing]
That was easy.
I thought I thought I'd make up
[chattering and laughing]
So we're playing it as if there's
two vaulted chambers below the lab.
One will be the ice chamber,
so it has a slightly different look,
and then we're gonna redress it
for The Creature's cell
where Victor puts The Creature
after he's created him.
[dramatic music playing]
Let's do it again.
And you just go, "Yeah." And you move.
[Miles] We could have
built the ship on a stage,
but there's no stage
really big enough to hold it.
So we built it in a parking lot.
[Oscar] It was always there,
this icon of the production,
just this massive boat.
It is so big.
It's a monumental piece of craftsmanship.
[Felix] It's like an optical illusion.
It doesn't make any sense to you.
[Guillermo] I want a real ship.
I want when The Creature moves it,
I want The Creature to move it.
So we did the ship for real.
Interior, exterior, everything.
[Oscar] It was very exciting,
'cause when we got the chance
to actually shoot that scene
where I get lifted up
onto the boat itself, with all the sailors
and the torches everywhere,
it was massive and it moved,
and it was on a gimbal
with ropes and real masts
all over the place.
So, for anyone familiar with the novel
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,
you'll know that it starts and ends
with the captain's log on a ship.
So, for us, we had to come up with
strong opening for the front of the movie
where the ship is stuck in the Arctic ice,
and that's where a lot of
the climactic action takes place.
So we had to set this ship
convincingly in the Arctic ice.
You see all of these icebergs
that were made
by our special effects department
and our art department.
They look incredible.
The ship also had to shake
from side to side,
so we have what is called a gimbal,
that moves it nine degrees
in either direction.
What we have here are ship models
for the Horizont.
It went through many phases,
helping determine how the ship moves,
how much of the ship is built.
This was used for stunts to figure out
which portions of the ship
would wild on the port side,
and we had our rigging up top
for a rigging team.
We had portions of our riser
that wild for camera.
Having a physical model like this
helps the whole team.
[man] Of all the sets, the ship
is the most challenging one,
but it's mostly because of the logistics.
We basically worked from September
till the end of January.
The welders were on it for,
I think, a good eight weeks,
and then the middle of October,
Special Effects had built
the inner core, which we call "the spine."
Basically, it's the piece that rotates,
you know, on the gimbal.
And the carpenters
started putting all the decking in,
and then all the detail work started.
And at the same time,
the masts, obviously,
were a very big piece of the puzzle.
[Tamara] Like, we didn't put a mast
right through the captain's quarters,
which there would be on a boat.
Guillermo loves the symmetry,
and he wants to
walk into the captain's quarters
and see the round window and have
Victor framed in the round window.
So we cheated things.
We're gonna extend with him. Go. Go.
Very good. Very good. Very good.
Arm up.
Very good. Say it.
When you're shooting a ship like that,
then you have a logistical problem.
50% of craft in directing
is problem-solving
mechanical and physical means.
So, in the ship, you have
a battle of cranes to light it,
cranes for stunt,
cranes for blocking the light.
Every crane has to negotiate the space.
So the negotiation of that logistic
to shoot the ship
is, in and of itself,
like going into a battle.
You have to have a very precise strategy
on how you shoot it.
[Dan] In the scale of the movie,
he knows exactly
how the drama is
and how he's going to tell it.
You know, he's very precise about that.
So the big scale, a lot of action,
and then coming into, like,
a very intimate scene
in the captain's quarters.
[Baron] Perhaps there is a finer point
in me telling you my story.
Whether there is or isn't, Baron
I'd like to hear it.
Originally, the interior of the ship
was gonna be Danish white.
He said white represents death,
and so when you get
to the space of the Arctic,
it was almost like he'd created a limbo.
We made it white and that kind of worked,
but then Kate decided to do the Royal Navy
in a particular blue
that was a little heightened.
I remember, you know, the ship and Tamara,
you know, everyone was expecting
dark navy uniforms.
There was a question mark,
and Guillermo said,
"No, we need that quite bright."
[Guillermo] When we saw
the uniforms of the sailors,
we thought, "Let's bring that blue
into the captain's quarters."
So we integrated
Kate's colors into the ship.
The sailors are the landscape.
The landscape is the ship.
The ship are the sailors.
It's all one thing.
[instrumental music playing]
[Tamara] In terms of Edinburgh,
where we shot the street scenes,
really it wasn't a stretch for us
because it was actually used
as a marketplace at the time.
And actual public gallows
happened in other places in Glasgow.
[all cheering]
The cathedral has huge,
soaring ceilings that are amazing.
Just when you go to frame them
in our, you know, 1:85 frame,
you don't see the soaring ceilings
unless you're, you know, looking up.
But the lower area of the cathedral
had lower arched ceilings,
and it was moody and intimate.
And better for Dan to light
'cause it was all on ground level.
Like, for him to light any of these
giant cathedrals would be a nightmare.
Look at this. It's so gigantic.
Of course, the beauty of location
is you get the age.
You've got the feeling of the real stuff.
But when you go into the studio,
you can control everything.
But this is this is history.
This is fantastic.
[indistinct conversation]
[Dan] We shoot much more wide angle
than what we have done before.
And when you're shooting large format,
you don't have these,
like, super-wide angle looks
because you have the big sensors.
And that's a very powerful look, I think.
And because the camera's always moving,
you know, the light has to move as well.
It's very organic.
The way we are shooting the movie,
Guillermo and me, you know,
we're going a little bit more back
to the old-fashioned big lights,
because we don't have
any lights inside the set.
Most of the time,
all the lights are outside the set.
Laustsen and I have been pursuing
single-source lighting for a long time.
What does it mean?
It means that you have
a huge amount of light
coming through a single source,
like a window,
and everything else is a bounce
or a fill that you should not be aware of.
So the result is
it feels like a period movie.
You don't feel it lit.
It feels like
you're entering a real place.
Father! Save her, please!
[Dan] So, we are starting super-wide,
and coming into, like,
a kind of close-up in the same time.
And that is the reason
we have big machines outside
to control the sun and control the lights.
[Felix] When I get into those rooms,
I think, "Oh, it's a very sunny day."
"It's very bright."
And then I realize it's raining outside,
and it looks like
there's full sunshine inside
because of hundreds of lights outside.
We want to do as much
as we can in the camera.
And the miniature shooting
is because it looks so real.
There is a difference between
the physical and the digital.
Particularly in something like
the explosions on the lab.
-[explosion]
-[Guillermo] You're seeing real bounces
of the physical battery falling
and hitting the other.
And the accidents that happen
with a physical set blowing apart
are gonna be ten times more complex
than any decision
a digital technician made.
[Tamara] This tower is 450 feet high.
We could never build it,
but we've built the full miniature,
which is really a maxiature,
'cause it's, like, 30 feet.
There was a set built in Toronto
that we then had to match as model makers
but at a 1:40 scale.
There's some details we have
that traditionally
we'd have to hand-sculpt to do the match.
But now we can use 3D printers to help us.
So a good example is the door
at the very front,
all that ornate detail, at one point,
someone had had to sculpt.
But this time round, we know
that is gonna be the exact same thing
as what's over in Toronto.
That was kind of a fascinating process,
to work with a group of artists who--
You know, there might only be
ten people in the world
who do what they do.
[Guillermo] They'll give more reality.
You have a base that is real,
then you enhance digitally.
Whether it's the deer in the forest,
or shooting the footage of the wolves
with real wolves, then going into digital,
you have to have some element
that you explored with physically.
So we built a tower and blew it up.
[explosion]
[man] Guillermo's process
has gotten much more immediate.
On this movie,
he's been a constant presence
in the cutting room, early every day
to see how the story
that is on the page
is translating into the story on screen,
which are not always the same thing.
Guillermo has a pretty good idea
what the movie is gonna look like,
but he still shapes it as he shoots.
If there's something that you need
that you may not have,
it gives you the ability
to go back and get it.
[Oscar] It reminded me of when
I would make movies with my friends
with a video camera, and we'd be like,
"Okay, now you say your line."
"Okay, now you say your line."
Basically editing in camera.
It had that kind of energy to it.
-Again?
-Yeah.
We started with no score,
because the movie does have
a great rhythm without any temp music.
And once Alexandre Desplat comes in
and adds his work,
it'll take it to a whole new level.
[Guillermo] Alexandre is, in my opinion,
one of the best composers alive.
He's a guy that knows exactly
why he's doing something
and exactly how to achieve an emotion,
and exactly
how to make the music eloquent.
I deeply think that, to have a good score,
you have to find
the soul of the film,
create beside the film
another dimension that follows the film,
and amplify the emotions of the film.
[instrumental music playing]
[Alexandre] So with Guillermo,
there are some scenes
where we think maybe
there shouldn't be music.
Maybe we don't need it because
the characters don't need to add more.
Or it could be a very violent,
rough scene that we see,
and if the score is the opposite it may be
better than just adding more horror.
[man] Cut!
[Alexandre] In some very active moments
of craziness, you know,
when he's building his Creature
or when he's trying to get
the storm and lightning,
I've used many organs
that create a kind of multi-wave,
multi-arpeggio movement,
which really amplifies
the craziness of the situation.
But if you put on top of that the violin
suddenly it's taken this twister
of sounds and
They feel this energy
that Guillermo put in his film
and I try to convey with the music.
No, no, no!
[Alexandre] If there was a recipe,
every movie would be a masterpiece.
But it's very hard to do a masterpiece.
No! No! No!
[Alexandre] It's a vapor
that you have to kind of mold
and take to wherever you want to take it.
[dramatic music playing]
[Guillermo] Is immortality a curse
or a blessing?
Do you want to be alive
in a painful state?
Can you find the redemption in that?
The ending of Pinocchio,
the ending of Cronos
and the ending of Frankenstein
are exactly the same.
A character being bathed in a dawning sun
and accepting the daylight.
The idea of loving a character
that is imperfect,
and forgiving those imperfections.
And ultimately,
the search of style with the camera,
and the light, and the color
is on Cronos and is on Frankenstein.
If I made Frankenstein earlier,
I would have done it
a dialogue between me and my father.
Now it's a dialogue between my father
and me and me and my kids.
Generational pain passed
from one generation to the other,
and how can you say,
"Stop. Let's move forward"?
There's a line from that moment
to this one that takes 30 years.
And the funny thing is,
I think it marks an ending.
What I would like to do
is I would like to make a movie that tries
to do things that I don't "normally" do.
Some people age
and they become more risk-averse,
and some people age
and become more risk-prone.
And I think I would like to go that way.
There's a line in the movie that says,
"And having reached the end of the world,
there was no more horizon
and the achievement felt unnatural."
That's how I feel right now.
is that you are creating
something that is gonna stay there
forever.
It's very important that everything
is accurate and perfect,
'cause people come to expect
a handmade movie
when you go to an epic like this.
I thought it's gonna be
an extraordinary process,
and it has been.
Victor!
Certain stories become part of your DNA.
If you're religious,
you get them from the Bible.
If you love fairy tales,
you get them from the fables or parables.
Two of the closest things to me
are Pinocchio and Frankenstein.
The theme of father and sons
and the fracturing of a human being
is a big theme for him.
They both are stories
about "abnormal kids,"
born to fathers
that are disappointed in a way.
Say one word.
One word more. Anything.
It's Guillermo's take on it.
He's been thinking about it
for a long time.
Ever since he was a small child,
this has been a bucket list project
for him that he's always wanted to do,
and he felt like he was ready
as a filmmaker to make it.
Yes, yes. That's you.
[Guillermo] I've lived with
Mary Shelley's creation all of my life,
but I wanted to make it my own.
Through the years, I decided
to make it a he said, she said.
The first part of the movie
is told from the point of view
of the scientist, Victor.
Trickery?
Are you sure?
[crowd murmuring]
That is not trickery. That is a decision.
Motor coordination between
the eye of one dead man
and the arm of another.
Release now.
Please.
"Please" always helps.
[man] There's an element of uncertainty,
what can be trusted of Victor's story.
"Is there really a creature?"
is the question.
Whether you believe me or not
[shuddering] it will come back.
[man 2] That's sort of
the purpose of a monster
that comes from this kind of literature,
is to make us question our humanity
and turn a mirror back onto the world.
I made you well.
I need you to make a companion for me.
One like me.
[Guillermo] The second part of the movie
is like when your kids come to you
and say, "Here's what you did wrong,"
and you have an epiphany.
So it's the prodigal father, I called it,
getting the son
to tell him what he did wrong.
[woman] It's a story
about this brilliant scientist
who was able to create life.
But it's also about so many other things.
There's themes of grief and of fathers
and sons and loneliness and isolation
and that need to belong
and that need for love.
[man] For Guillermo, it was
"How do those things
all dovetail together?"
And the thing that he did so brilliantly
is he really gave you space
to not judge either story
but to actually understand each story,
to be able to tell the full breadth
of what the book does,
'cause it was really important for him
to tell the monster's story as well.
[groaning]
I will make you bleed.
-I will make you humble.
-[groaning]
Part of the appeal of the book
is that it's like a teenager
that asks too many questions
and you get irritated
'cause they're very smart.
The book has that fidgety sort of energy.
It wants to question capitalism.
It wants to question, '"Who am I?"
"Why am I here? Why did God send me?"
"What is my purpose? What is the world?"
And I wanted to capture that.
I want to know who I am.
Guillermo has embraced those questions
without necessarily feeling the need
to provide a definitive answer.
-I fear you, Victor.
-No, no
I always have.
Every ounce of madness and destruction.
[crying]
You are the monster.
[man] Guillermo worked out a way
to stay true to the original novel,
but also putting in
his own handwriting, his own style,
his own way of showing emotions,
showing life.
[breathing heavily]
[Jacob] The film is a dedication
to the metaphysical
and Gothic and otherworldly,
but also very much of this world.
He takes the things
that we can't conceive,
these images from our subconscious,
and he brings them back,
and he makes them palatable
for us to understand.
[Guillermo] I tried to absorb the style
of dialogue and the themes,
so a lot of the dialogue
is entirely original,
but it has the patois and the rhythms
of Mary Shelley's from the book.
Some of what I will tell you is fact.
[groans]
Some is not, but it is all true.
The way fiction and the reality
of the novel merged
is just amazing.
[dramatic music playing]
[man] The structure's basically intact.
And there's a chute going from top,
right to the bottom.
I can arrange for your belongings.
What Guillermo tends to do
is write for actors,
so he wrote the first draft
with some of these actors in mind.
Certainly with Oscar in mind.
I didn't even really know
that Frankenstein was something
that was simmering for him and
I sat at his house, at his amazing house,
full of books and, you know,
oddities and art,
and we just started talking.
We talk about our fathers
and we talk about being fathers,
and we talked very sincerely.
And he just said,
"Heck, you need to play Victor."
But I said you have to be not afraid
of playing the main character
which becomes the villain.
He just said the good and the evil
are sides of the same thing,
and they're constantly
flipping back and forth.
No, don't touch me!
Don't ever touch me!
I am more attracted to making movies
about people that are full of villainy,
because ultimately it's a more real way
of seeing the world.
Jacob came to be cast about nine weeks
before we started shooting.
When that happened, I said,
"Anything that goes 'wrong' in this movie
is gonna go right."
I'm gonna listen to the movie."
The idea on set he had every day
was that the movie
will reject what it doesn't want,
and it will keep what it wants.
We're just here as, like, fans
and as lovers of this thing,
and the movie is gonna tell us.
Where would be a good mark?
For the crossing?
Jacob and I spoke in preproduction a lot,
but then very little.
One or two takes in, I printed,
'cause he was exactly what needed to be
and there was not many repetitions.
He's an excellent actor.
[Oscar] I was really impressed
at what a pro he is.
For someone that's so young
and has to deal with
10, 12 hours of makeup,
getting called in
at 2:00 in the morning,
Jacob embodied it
with such poise and commitment.
And you can even go like this
and you leave this hand there,
-you feel the name
-Yeah.
and then you say it.
With The Creature,
I needed somebody that sees promise.
Mia Goth gave me that.
[Miles] Mia is a very instinctual actor.
She's really able to respond
on the fly, kind of intuitively.
[Guillermo] She's one of the most
real actors I've ever worked with.
I learned to shoot her the way
she needed to be shot,
to give her spontaneity.
Elizabeth.
I must confess something to you.
I have a belief in the marvelous
and so do you.
There is a bond between us.
Can you feel it?
An almost physical one.
I truly believe it to be something else.
Believing something does not make it true.
I figured out that
that's exactly how Elizabeth would feel.
However it is you feel on the day,
let that inform whatever it is
the scene wants to be.
-William.
-Victor.
-Look at you.
-[laughs]
[William] May I introduce
the woman I'm to marry?
Lady Elizabeth Harlander.
There is a big change from the novel,
and any adaptation of Frankenstein,
because Elizabeth is William's fiance.
[Scott] Felix is William,
who is Victor's younger brother.
Guillermo really wanted
to create that dynamic
so you could understand Victor's pain.
He is the guy that would
love for his brother to love him.
[Felix] Victor Frankenstein's brother
doesn't really appear in the novel.
It's a 5-year-old child, and that's it.
When I read the script, I nearly fainted,
because Guillermo blew up
the whole role to something
that is actually quite considerable.
If I did my job right,
you will feel like that's the way it was,
but it's not at all.
William was a fully-developed character,
something I've experienced very rarely.
[Harlander] I have secured
William's service
for the duration of the project.
Anything you need or want
shall be granted.
[Miles] There was no one ever considered
for the role of Harlander
other than Christoph.
He had that gravitas
that you really need for that role.
I wanted him to be an antagonist
and a victim at the same time.
Guillermo was very adamant about that
he needs that character
and what he needs it for.
That's already a pretty firm basis
for what I do.
He played it very charming
and full of wit.
But when he reveals what his real motive
is for financing the experiments
I want to be placed
in this new perfect body.
I find it very moving.
Let's lower the dummy slowly.
[man] Lower the dummy. Copy that.
All right. Let's shoot it.
Ready, and action.
[man] Three, two, one, go.
[thuds]
[Miles] Guillermo has generally said
there are four legs to the table.
Production design, cinematography,
costumes, makeup and hair.
And they're all essentially one thing.
Call them all production design.
In that way, those four areas
have to be completely coordinated.
[Guillermo] Basically, a director
prepares a whole meal,
and those that make it with him
are also the guests.
And if you seat that table properly,
with Mike, with Kate,
with Tamara, with Dan Laustsen,
it's a great meal.
Wardrobe is set,
set construction is wardrobe.
Cinematography is set construction.
Action.
The only role of the director
is directing all those elements
to tell the same story.
-A little more of the mushy brains.
-[man] Yeah.
[Miles] When we've got
the same people doing it
over the course of a number of films,
that all gets refined.
Those trust relationships
are completely defined,
communication is very, very clear.
That's part of the secret sauce.
Little Laustsen.
Like them with the hat or no?
Every day I meet with everyone,
and every day I tell them
what I'm changing.
There's not a single thing
that means nothing.
Everything means everything.
That symphonic approach fuses everything.
The cinematography,
the wardrobe and the set design.
[Mia] There are very few filmmakers
who actually are capable
of creating worlds,
that are able to operate
at such a scale and execute such scope.
[Felix] Guillermo really puts
all of his heart into this film
that you can feel it.
He really put something together
that is an experience
once in a lifetime, I think.
[Oscar] Everything
had a practical quality,
and it speaks to a type of film
that is an endangered species, I'd say.
I'm not sure how many more
of those there's gonna be.
[Guillermo] There are huge sets,
huge props, complex wardrobe.
I wanted the movie
to test the capabilities
of every single craft in movie-making.
There. There.
[gasps]
[dramatic music playing]
[Guillermo] There are three phases
to image creation.
At first, I want to see what you think,
and then I tell you what I'm thinking.
Then it becomes a dialogue.
And then the final thing
is coordinating all that
between all the departments
so that the image feels like
everything is working together.
We do a huge mood board.
We say, "These are the colors
that are coding the movie."
The greens should be only for Elizabeth.
The blues should be Harlander
and the brother and the father.
The red is only for the mother and Victor.
And then when we have all these documents,
we have a dialogue.
And Kate's wardrobe captures that.
Guillermo said to me,
"I don't want fusty old period for this."
"You know, it needs to be of its own."
At the very beginning of a film,
I always respond to the script
with a response
in terms of images and a mood board,
and I've used this
for discussions with Guillermo.
It gives me a map,
and it gives the team a feel
for fabrics and colors
and things to respond to as well.
I wanted to make the costumes feel modern.
I didn't want you to see
a pastel-colored period,
because I wanted Victor
to be dressed like Mick Jagger.
[Oscar] I remember
first seeing Kate's drawings
with different ideas
taken from pictures off the Internet,
kind of these strange amalgams,
and seeing these incredible costumes.
And so you kind of come in
and I put these things on and
see what they feel like
and try to pretend
a little bit that I belong.
That's the first feeling.
You know, just approaching it.
As we gather research,
many drawings are made.
I think we've got hundreds
of drawings of Victor.
And then one day
Guillermo's walking casually past.
He went,
"Well, that's my Victor right there."
And then we had to-- Went with that one,
and that developed
into fittings with Oscar
and became the layered wardrobe
that he has now.
[Oscar] One of the first things
that happens with characters
is the initial questions.
"What are the elements of this guy?"
"Is he trying to look a certain way?"
"Is he not? Is he trying to provoke?"
"How does that translate
into how the story progresses
and what happens
when he has a little bit more money?"
What does he put on?"
The costume fitting started
to be a place to start collaborating
and realizing we're actually
building this character together,
especially when we got
to the creation of The Creature,
and the way he takes off pieces
or adds pieces,
and what is that saying
about his inner life?
I got so much information from that.
[Kate] Mike had done a couple
of early maquettes for The Creature
which were so beautiful,
you know, with all those beautiful lines
and that pinky-red running through it,
and that starts informing me
about how I can utilize those things
within the clothes or costume.
I talked with Kate to see
what would emphasize this Creature,
his length and his height
and his elegance.
And Kate is a master
at this type of character.
So the costume was reflecting
The Creature's look as well.
[Kate] A simple coat has taken
quite a few weeks of R&D.
So the idea
was The Creature finds his coat
in an old burial ground
of soldiers from the Crimean War.
So we thought
it was a beautiful idea to
have the imprint
of the skeletons on the coat,
so we created sort of spines and things.
The evolution of this coat goes through
a lot of stages and transitions,
with the journey to the Arctic
and his visit to the mill.
So every time he's in an environment,
the qualities of his garment change.
-We can play with it a bit more.
-Yeah. I would
-I would leave only the eyes.
-Okay.
It's interesting, 'cause we did
months and months of concept work,
and then Guillermo is improvising
all the time through the process.
So, your actor comes and it's like you've
almost got to let go and see what falls.
A lot of your job
is sort of reacting to things,
to support what's happening on set.
There's huge collaboration in that.
And not to mention,
Mia is part of that collaboration as well.
[Mia] We had so many costume fittings.
The level of craftsmanship
is unparalleled.
I've never experienced
anything quite like it.
I was always looking forward to my fitting
'cause I was always able
to get a little bit more information
and to see how Kate was
looking at the story as a whole and
and my relation to other characters
and how the dress was a language for that.
[Kate] It's a question
about Elizabeth's environment
and the books that she loves and nature,
and how do we incorporate that
into her clothing to make it unique?
We took traditional garments
like a cape, shawl,
pelerine of the period
that responded
to sort of the beetle and moth imagery
that Guillermo likes to use,
and we developed these
into sort of fractal body patterns.
When you look at beetles and things,
their patterns are so big.
But then we had to sort of work out
how we could apply patterns
or delicate layers,
and we developed this artwork
that took months of fractal patterns
and mixing blood cells
and malachites and that together
which is all part of this nod
to the themes of nature.
We've also been playing
with the idea of X-rays,
and we've been developing this
on tools and things like that
to play with overlays
so it's not so flat and saturated.
So we've been trying
to capture that with Mia's clothing.
[Guillermo] And action.
[Kate] There's a dress for
a moment on the heath
with her and Victor
in his full seduction mode,
and we're looking
at these beautiful stones
that art department have created.
They have these swirling patterns in them.
[woman] Kate's done some incredible things
with taking patterns from our sets
and using them in the costumes.
[Guillermo] Kate knows that her wardrobe
is a piece of color,
a piece of shape
and a piece of information
and a piece of beauty within a set.
So Tamara and her, very important
that they have a dialogue together.
Tamara's great at sharing
every part of their process with us,
and so we look at the work they're doing
and we reflect her architecture
and things with our department.
[Guillermo] You don't feel wardrobe
pulling one way
and architecture pulling another.
These are not isolated ideas
that occur at the same time.
You're directing an opera,
and you're leaning
to the same emotional point.
[Kate] Guillermo's very clear,
as was Dan Laustsen, our DOP.
It was always how color was going to read,
because what you see to the naked eye
is not what you're reading on camera ever
with these cameras.
We do many, many tests
through digital cameras.
We got Dan to set up lighting.
[Dan] We are very much in control
of the color palette,
because otherwise it's changing
everybody else's work.
You know, if Kate is spending
a lot of time to find the green color
and we're just going to make it more blue,
the green is going to disappear.
[Guillermo] Dan and I talked about
the painterly color of the movie,
and we ended up with blue, white and gold
for the prologue and the epilogue.
Then the childhood
is black and white and red.
From then on,
you start adding more colors.
We talked a lot about how to light it
and how the set should look.
And, of course, all that is done
with the production designer, Tamara,
because to light it well is a teamwork.
[Tamara] There's an evolution in the lab,
through Dan's lighting.
He tells the story when it's fresh.
And the first time
that Victor's here, it's very bright,
and then it gets darker
and the storm comes,
and then there's lightning,
and then there's the moment of creation.
[Kate] Guillermo wanted
very saturated colors.
Elizabeth he wanted in the greens,
and Victor's embraced some of the reds.
And there's sort of
an interesting color palette together.
It reflects the colors
in the batteries and the lab,
so it's all a part of
that slightly psychedelic world.
[Mike] The color palette for The Creature
was to make this thing
that was pleasing to look at.
You know, there's beauty in ugliness.
[Guillermo] The makeup needs to tell you
that he's made of pieces.
Why is he made of pieces?
That's one thing I wanted to know,
because, really,
if you are Victor Frankenstein,
you go to a cemetery, you grab a body,
you grab a hand, you grab an arm.
That's it. It's made of three pieces.
But if they give you
the pieces of a battlefield,
then that explains why he's
putting it together like a jigsaw puzzle.
So the makeup needed to reflect that,
but have a beauty.
Mike and I are Frankenstein-heads.
I have a whole room
dedicated to Frankenstein.
Mike builds the things that are in my room
for Frankenstein,
and we are groupies.
[Jacob] Michael loves Frankenstein
as much as Guillermo.
When he saw Boris Karloff on screen
for the first time, it changed his life.
[Mike] I had to figure out
what Guillermo wanted.
You know, I can help
push his ideas further,
but it has to be about what he wants
and what his movie is about.
And what I got was,
people see monsters
in beautiful things sometimes,
and we didn't have
to do this ogre of a creature.
We didn't want all
these garish wounds and stitching.
So I said, "Well, okay.
This is Victor's first go at this."
So, you know, a dressmaker can't make
the perfect dress the first time.
There's a lot more stitches
and patching going on.
The second one would be a lot better.
But his first one, to me--
I thought, "Okay. You've got
to make sense of these scars."
"So maybe they're access points,
maybe they're points he went in,
"changed the muscle
and then figured, 'That's not right.'"
"It's not working. I can improve that,"
then went back in again.
Victor Frankenstein is not a butcher.
He's trying to make the perfect man.
At the end of the day,
this is a man brought back from the dead,
but it doesn't mean
that he can't look beautiful.
So I just played around
with colors and forms and shapes
that would make
the actor's body feel powerful.
-[screaming]
-[metal clanging]
Victor!
And developed it
further and further from there.
Yeah. Something. He was
To be a part of To be a part of
[Guillermo] So, I called Jacob,
and immediately,
we started talking about the monster.
[Jacob] When we started, he just said,
"You have to leave the world behind."
"Emotionally, you have
to close your ears off
and close your nostrils off
and change the way that you see things
to be able to shift
into this kind of original being."
[Guillermo] I said
the hard thing to do is the zero.
I said, "If you want
to study anyone, study your dog."
You know, your dog can be there.
If it needs to attack something,
the dog attacks
[bones breaking]
[screaming and growling]
and then sit by you
like he's been there all day.
You are my friend.
[Jacob] I studied butoh,
which is sort of like the dance
of re-animating a corpse,
and that was really helpful in terms
of isolating different parts of your body
and thinking about movement
in a different way.
[Mike] Jacob is a really
well-proportioned man,
so it was ideal,
and I could see that in his frame.
But also, he had
an almost panther-like grace
in his body and his movements.
I think he was born to do this.
[Guillermo] And action.
[The Creature grunting]
Mike and I agreed on using
as much of the body of Jacob as we could,
because that gives him more expressiveness
and more reality.
This is the very first time
we applied the makeup to Jacob
back in Los Angeles.
It was the first application
we ever did on him,
and then the next application
was the first day on set.
[woman] It's a tag-team effort.
There's a bunch of us,
and we all swarm Jacob at once.
First we start on his head,
then we slowly move down
and he's encased in prosthetics.
[Jacob] It was totally consuming
because I would sit in the makeup chair
for ten hours,
and sort of lose my humanity,
and your skin gets washed out
and covered with something,
and your face
and the structure changes,
and then you put the costume on,
and it's an immersive experience.
[Mike] The full body
is actually 42 pieces.
Normally, with a makeup like this,
you can overlap in appliance.
So you've got a little room for error.
But since I broke the makeup up
along the actual cuts and stitches,
where Frankenstein put him together
like a jigsaw puzzle,
which is very exacting,
it takes a little longer to apply,
but much more manmade-looking.
[Megan] Guillermo wanted us
to stay away from jet-black hair,
so we have more of a brown, layered,
multi-colored, darker version.
And I believe it was his idea
to have the one shock lock,
'cause obviously it's cool,
but also it shows that he's distinctly
made up of different people.
[Jacob] All I needed to be was
the sort of perfect still canvas
for him to paint life onto.
So I just wanted to be as calm
and as respectful of his process
as I could be,
because he's genuinely
one of the finest artists
I've ever encountered.
[Oscar] I think what's amazing is that
the descriptions in the book come to life,
and it's not the one
that we normally associate.
[man speaking indistinctly]
If you can-- If you can go up here,
it would be nice.
I was taken aback by it because I had
this idea of what The Creature is like
in other iterations
of Frankenstein that I've seen.
But what I really loved and appreciated
is kind of how it's scaled back
in a way a little bit.
There's a purity to it.
[Oscar] The way Jacob embodies him,
there's so much grace,
and what continues to happen
throughout the story
affects the way his body becomes stronger
and more defensive,
and then eventually into more offensive.
Stay back!
[man screaming]
[Mike] So we did make some replicas
of Jacob as The Creature.
One was a dissection body.
So where we see
these pieces being put together,
where, you know, the knee will go into
a new knee socket that gets screwed in.
The section of the brain comes out
so you can see inside the head.
You know, a new heart,
and see where Victor is operating
and putting
this piecemeal creature together.
The other one we have is
when The Creature's raised up on
the Y-frame for his birthing scene,
obviously, we couldn't leave an actor
stood up there all day in this pose,
so we made a full six-foot-five replica
of Jacob in the makeup for that scene.
Being a Frankenstein movie,
there's a lot of body parts,
there's a lot of corpses.
[Guillermo] I wanted to show the surgery
with anatomically correct butchery.
Because, ultimately,
to break a bone and reglue it
or to connect ligaments and tendons
is an incredibly messy business.
[Mike] So we have literally
dozens of bodies
and body parts on that set.
And I thought,
we'll just throw a few out there,
but no, no, Guillermo wanted them all.
[macabre music playing]
A little more out here.
-Yeah.
-Yeah.
[Guillermo] Most directors put their
office next to production and accounting.
But I am a pest.
I put my office in the art department.
And I demand to see props
two, three times a week.
A bad piece of set decoration
can pop you out of the movie.
'Cause it's not real anymore.
[Tamara] Early on,
we were sort of doing this dance
of "What is our take on
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
and what is Guillermo's vision of that?"
My tendency is to be really real
and accurate and historic,
and Guillermo is more into the fantasy
and pushing the vision.
That combination of our two visions
together really works.
At some point, Guillermo likes to go
from the very rough concept
to, like, fully 3D model.
It has to go from being rooted in fantasy
to a little more rooted in reality.
[woman] These models were basically
the first physical look at these sets
before construction goes in and actually
starts building the real thing.
They helped visualize
what will go on in that set.
The more tools that we can use
as an art department
to share with Guillermo and Dan Laustsen
to get the design ideas across the better.
And then there's always the question
of what's important for Guillermo
to have as a built set.
Victor's apartment was a must-build,
and one of my favorite sets.
It was scripted that it was this
impossibly cluttered and crooked set.
It was a really beautiful way
to start the movie,
'cause it was one of our first sets,
and it sort of set the tone
for what our Frankenstein would be.
[Felix] I remember I had my very first day
in the lab set.
Leaves are falling, water's trickling,
and you look up and you just lose it.
It's so big, it's so magnificent,
you can't believe
it is inside of a studio.
Well, the lab had to be spectacular.
I mean, it's the place
where the creation takes place,
and it's kind of the ultimate set.
[Oscar] The irony is the lab is so iconic
in people's heads,
from the different versions
that we've seen,
but it's not in the book.
Mary Shelley just skips over the how.
From the original movie and everything,
there's been a number of those labs,
but, of course, Guillermo,
he needs to top all of those.
I think we did that,
with a brilliant combination
of production design,
lighting, special effects.
You know, we're raining inside there
and we got lightning flying.
It was really something to see.
[Guillermo] I knew that I wanted to shoot
in the lab with big cranes,
with a lot of movement, like a concert.
So I knew I was gonna have
the cranes sweeping up and down.
It was a mixture between
a musician or a performer,
going from one synthesizer to the other
and having to run ten stories up
to call in the power of electricity
and come ten stories down.
And how frantic it is
when the storm finally comes.
[Oscar] Being there,
with those days of rain
and seeing the way it transforms
from just an empty, rundown water tower
to this mad lab,
with body parts
and blood strewn all over the place,
and at the center,
this crucified Creature,
it was astounding.
So we're sort of a third way
up in the tower,
which is really, in our world,
450 feet high.
So, below us is the lobby,
and then below that is The Creature's cell
and an ice chamber.
And then going up, this vortex goes
all the way to the very top of the tower,
where Victor has to attach
the lightning rod.
And then there's a chute that goes down
the middle that, by dropping things down
from one to the other,
we tied all of those things together.
[Tamara] Guillermo wanted
a tiled nightmare.
There was a very rudimentary sketch
early on of Elizabeth and The Creature
in front of a tiled circle,
and that was all he had.
So the idea of this is it's a vaulted
Gothic-style tiled nightmare of a place
that's underground, below the lab.
Some of the tile is real,
some of the tile we created.
It's a bit of a tricky set because
we had to burn the set, basically.
[Dan] What Tamara has done here
is a masterpiece.
You know, the set is so amazing.
But, of course, because
everything is shot on the crane,
all the walls have to fly
to be able to get the crane in.
[Guillermo] If you're building a set,
you want to move everything.
And it has to move within three minutes
of you saying, "Move that."
So anything that was there,
a steam machine, a column, an archway,
you need to remove it so the crane
can go into the set and shoot.
[Tamara] So, the set is supported
by the grid and the ceiling,
so we had to come up with
a solution for wilding columns.
So what we have
is a machine that comes in,
lifts this section up
and then this pulls out,
and then it drops down into position
so we can pull it out
so the camera can sweep through.
Our talented team put that together.
Genius.
I thought I would offer some help.
[laughing]
That was easy.
I thought I thought I'd make up
[chattering and laughing]
So we're playing it as if there's
two vaulted chambers below the lab.
One will be the ice chamber,
so it has a slightly different look,
and then we're gonna redress it
for The Creature's cell
where Victor puts The Creature
after he's created him.
[dramatic music playing]
Let's do it again.
And you just go, "Yeah." And you move.
[Miles] We could have
built the ship on a stage,
but there's no stage
really big enough to hold it.
So we built it in a parking lot.
[Oscar] It was always there,
this icon of the production,
just this massive boat.
It is so big.
It's a monumental piece of craftsmanship.
[Felix] It's like an optical illusion.
It doesn't make any sense to you.
[Guillermo] I want a real ship.
I want when The Creature moves it,
I want The Creature to move it.
So we did the ship for real.
Interior, exterior, everything.
[Oscar] It was very exciting,
'cause when we got the chance
to actually shoot that scene
where I get lifted up
onto the boat itself, with all the sailors
and the torches everywhere,
it was massive and it moved,
and it was on a gimbal
with ropes and real masts
all over the place.
So, for anyone familiar with the novel
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,
you'll know that it starts and ends
with the captain's log on a ship.
So, for us, we had to come up with
strong opening for the front of the movie
where the ship is stuck in the Arctic ice,
and that's where a lot of
the climactic action takes place.
So we had to set this ship
convincingly in the Arctic ice.
You see all of these icebergs
that were made
by our special effects department
and our art department.
They look incredible.
The ship also had to shake
from side to side,
so we have what is called a gimbal,
that moves it nine degrees
in either direction.
What we have here are ship models
for the Horizont.
It went through many phases,
helping determine how the ship moves,
how much of the ship is built.
This was used for stunts to figure out
which portions of the ship
would wild on the port side,
and we had our rigging up top
for a rigging team.
We had portions of our riser
that wild for camera.
Having a physical model like this
helps the whole team.
[man] Of all the sets, the ship
is the most challenging one,
but it's mostly because of the logistics.
We basically worked from September
till the end of January.
The welders were on it for,
I think, a good eight weeks,
and then the middle of October,
Special Effects had built
the inner core, which we call "the spine."
Basically, it's the piece that rotates,
you know, on the gimbal.
And the carpenters
started putting all the decking in,
and then all the detail work started.
And at the same time,
the masts, obviously,
were a very big piece of the puzzle.
[Tamara] Like, we didn't put a mast
right through the captain's quarters,
which there would be on a boat.
Guillermo loves the symmetry,
and he wants to
walk into the captain's quarters
and see the round window and have
Victor framed in the round window.
So we cheated things.
We're gonna extend with him. Go. Go.
Very good. Very good. Very good.
Arm up.
Very good. Say it.
When you're shooting a ship like that,
then you have a logistical problem.
50% of craft in directing
is problem-solving
mechanical and physical means.
So, in the ship, you have
a battle of cranes to light it,
cranes for stunt,
cranes for blocking the light.
Every crane has to negotiate the space.
So the negotiation of that logistic
to shoot the ship
is, in and of itself,
like going into a battle.
You have to have a very precise strategy
on how you shoot it.
[Dan] In the scale of the movie,
he knows exactly
how the drama is
and how he's going to tell it.
You know, he's very precise about that.
So the big scale, a lot of action,
and then coming into, like,
a very intimate scene
in the captain's quarters.
[Baron] Perhaps there is a finer point
in me telling you my story.
Whether there is or isn't, Baron
I'd like to hear it.
Originally, the interior of the ship
was gonna be Danish white.
He said white represents death,
and so when you get
to the space of the Arctic,
it was almost like he'd created a limbo.
We made it white and that kind of worked,
but then Kate decided to do the Royal Navy
in a particular blue
that was a little heightened.
I remember, you know, the ship and Tamara,
you know, everyone was expecting
dark navy uniforms.
There was a question mark,
and Guillermo said,
"No, we need that quite bright."
[Guillermo] When we saw
the uniforms of the sailors,
we thought, "Let's bring that blue
into the captain's quarters."
So we integrated
Kate's colors into the ship.
The sailors are the landscape.
The landscape is the ship.
The ship are the sailors.
It's all one thing.
[instrumental music playing]
[Tamara] In terms of Edinburgh,
where we shot the street scenes,
really it wasn't a stretch for us
because it was actually used
as a marketplace at the time.
And actual public gallows
happened in other places in Glasgow.
[all cheering]
The cathedral has huge,
soaring ceilings that are amazing.
Just when you go to frame them
in our, you know, 1:85 frame,
you don't see the soaring ceilings
unless you're, you know, looking up.
But the lower area of the cathedral
had lower arched ceilings,
and it was moody and intimate.
And better for Dan to light
'cause it was all on ground level.
Like, for him to light any of these
giant cathedrals would be a nightmare.
Look at this. It's so gigantic.
Of course, the beauty of location
is you get the age.
You've got the feeling of the real stuff.
But when you go into the studio,
you can control everything.
But this is this is history.
This is fantastic.
[indistinct conversation]
[Dan] We shoot much more wide angle
than what we have done before.
And when you're shooting large format,
you don't have these,
like, super-wide angle looks
because you have the big sensors.
And that's a very powerful look, I think.
And because the camera's always moving,
you know, the light has to move as well.
It's very organic.
The way we are shooting the movie,
Guillermo and me, you know,
we're going a little bit more back
to the old-fashioned big lights,
because we don't have
any lights inside the set.
Most of the time,
all the lights are outside the set.
Laustsen and I have been pursuing
single-source lighting for a long time.
What does it mean?
It means that you have
a huge amount of light
coming through a single source,
like a window,
and everything else is a bounce
or a fill that you should not be aware of.
So the result is
it feels like a period movie.
You don't feel it lit.
It feels like
you're entering a real place.
Father! Save her, please!
[Dan] So, we are starting super-wide,
and coming into, like,
a kind of close-up in the same time.
And that is the reason
we have big machines outside
to control the sun and control the lights.
[Felix] When I get into those rooms,
I think, "Oh, it's a very sunny day."
"It's very bright."
And then I realize it's raining outside,
and it looks like
there's full sunshine inside
because of hundreds of lights outside.
We want to do as much
as we can in the camera.
And the miniature shooting
is because it looks so real.
There is a difference between
the physical and the digital.
Particularly in something like
the explosions on the lab.
-[explosion]
-[Guillermo] You're seeing real bounces
of the physical battery falling
and hitting the other.
And the accidents that happen
with a physical set blowing apart
are gonna be ten times more complex
than any decision
a digital technician made.
[Tamara] This tower is 450 feet high.
We could never build it,
but we've built the full miniature,
which is really a maxiature,
'cause it's, like, 30 feet.
There was a set built in Toronto
that we then had to match as model makers
but at a 1:40 scale.
There's some details we have
that traditionally
we'd have to hand-sculpt to do the match.
But now we can use 3D printers to help us.
So a good example is the door
at the very front,
all that ornate detail, at one point,
someone had had to sculpt.
But this time round, we know
that is gonna be the exact same thing
as what's over in Toronto.
That was kind of a fascinating process,
to work with a group of artists who--
You know, there might only be
ten people in the world
who do what they do.
[Guillermo] They'll give more reality.
You have a base that is real,
then you enhance digitally.
Whether it's the deer in the forest,
or shooting the footage of the wolves
with real wolves, then going into digital,
you have to have some element
that you explored with physically.
So we built a tower and blew it up.
[explosion]
[man] Guillermo's process
has gotten much more immediate.
On this movie,
he's been a constant presence
in the cutting room, early every day
to see how the story
that is on the page
is translating into the story on screen,
which are not always the same thing.
Guillermo has a pretty good idea
what the movie is gonna look like,
but he still shapes it as he shoots.
If there's something that you need
that you may not have,
it gives you the ability
to go back and get it.
[Oscar] It reminded me of when
I would make movies with my friends
with a video camera, and we'd be like,
"Okay, now you say your line."
"Okay, now you say your line."
Basically editing in camera.
It had that kind of energy to it.
-Again?
-Yeah.
We started with no score,
because the movie does have
a great rhythm without any temp music.
And once Alexandre Desplat comes in
and adds his work,
it'll take it to a whole new level.
[Guillermo] Alexandre is, in my opinion,
one of the best composers alive.
He's a guy that knows exactly
why he's doing something
and exactly how to achieve an emotion,
and exactly
how to make the music eloquent.
I deeply think that, to have a good score,
you have to find
the soul of the film,
create beside the film
another dimension that follows the film,
and amplify the emotions of the film.
[instrumental music playing]
[Alexandre] So with Guillermo,
there are some scenes
where we think maybe
there shouldn't be music.
Maybe we don't need it because
the characters don't need to add more.
Or it could be a very violent,
rough scene that we see,
and if the score is the opposite it may be
better than just adding more horror.
[man] Cut!
[Alexandre] In some very active moments
of craziness, you know,
when he's building his Creature
or when he's trying to get
the storm and lightning,
I've used many organs
that create a kind of multi-wave,
multi-arpeggio movement,
which really amplifies
the craziness of the situation.
But if you put on top of that the violin
suddenly it's taken this twister
of sounds and
They feel this energy
that Guillermo put in his film
and I try to convey with the music.
No, no, no!
[Alexandre] If there was a recipe,
every movie would be a masterpiece.
But it's very hard to do a masterpiece.
No! No! No!
[Alexandre] It's a vapor
that you have to kind of mold
and take to wherever you want to take it.
[dramatic music playing]
[Guillermo] Is immortality a curse
or a blessing?
Do you want to be alive
in a painful state?
Can you find the redemption in that?
The ending of Pinocchio,
the ending of Cronos
and the ending of Frankenstein
are exactly the same.
A character being bathed in a dawning sun
and accepting the daylight.
The idea of loving a character
that is imperfect,
and forgiving those imperfections.
And ultimately,
the search of style with the camera,
and the light, and the color
is on Cronos and is on Frankenstein.
If I made Frankenstein earlier,
I would have done it
a dialogue between me and my father.
Now it's a dialogue between my father
and me and me and my kids.
Generational pain passed
from one generation to the other,
and how can you say,
"Stop. Let's move forward"?
There's a line from that moment
to this one that takes 30 years.
And the funny thing is,
I think it marks an ending.
What I would like to do
is I would like to make a movie that tries
to do things that I don't "normally" do.
Some people age
and they become more risk-averse,
and some people age
and become more risk-prone.
And I think I would like to go that way.
There's a line in the movie that says,
"And having reached the end of the world,
there was no more horizon
and the achievement felt unnatural."
That's how I feel right now.