2:22 Behind the Scenes Interview


2:22 Behind the Scenes Interview

2:22

Starring: Teresa Palmer, Michiel Huisman, Sam Reid

Director: Paul Currie

Writer: Todd Stein, Nathan Parker

 

Australia's Teresa Palmer (Hacksaw Ridge, Warm Bodies) stars alongside Game of Thrones' Michiel Huisman in a story of a love that will not die and lovers who may not survive.


Air traffic controller Dylan (Huisman) lives his life each day with consistent precision, but nevertheless senses something is missing. An ominous pattern of events becomes evident as it starts to repeat itself in exactly the same manner, at exactly 2:22pm every day. When he crosses paths with the beautiful Sarah (Palmer) they both feel a sense of connection, but little do they know they share a bond that transcends time itself.

 

2:22 in Cinemas 22nd Febrary 2018

Trailer

 

 

 

THE VISUAL WORLD OF 2:22


The universe that 2:22 exists in is incredibly precise. The film is set in the present day, but is constantly haunted and distorted by the past. It's a world in which time contracts and expands. The colours and rhythms of New York City are overlaid with the fragmenting world that Dylan experiences, the complexity of Jonas' artwork, and visions of a tragedy that played out thirty years before.


It would be a multilayered visual undertaking that was crucial to get right. Director Paul Currie says, 'The movie is a love story through time. One of the ways we approached time in the film is that it is not linear, time can be almost holographic. Dylan has a unique gift in that when he is in the zone he is able to perceive time in a different way, so we played with the dimensionalising of our lead character's point of view, that also connected to a larger visual idea of the film having a slightly holographic visual style. There are key beats in which Dylan sees layers of an incident through time and we always looked for unique visual ways to express this vision."

The events that surround Dylan – which begin as quite abrasive repeats and slowly transform into more of a choreographed predictable world – were shot in a way to heightened by music, sound effects and VFX. Currie says, 'The staccato broken rhythms in the early part of the story needed to come together to be almost symphonic by the end of the movie. The shot design and the filmmaking techniques employed are designed to give you a first person experience of what the character Dylan is both thinking and feeling."


Director of Photography David Eggby had met Paul Currie four years before principal photography of 2:22 began, spending six weeks shooting second unit on the film THE MOON AND THE SUN, for which Paul was the Second Unit Director.


Eggby recalls, 'During that shoot, Paul was talking a lot about this movie, 2:22, and how he was going to get it financed, and as it turned out, just before Christmas 2014 he said, -We've got the money, we're up and running, let's go and make a movie!'"


Given the financing structure, 2:22 would be filmed in studios and on location in Sydney, with additional key location filming in New York City. Producer Steve Hutensky says, 'I lived in New York for 21 years, so I was a litmus test for what would work and what would not. In Sydney, there's enough of a modern look that we could cheat for New York on the exteriors and interiors " we were able to find locations that made sense."


Producer Jodi Matterson agrees. 'We've done a lot of location shooting and it's quite extraordinary how many little pockets of Sydney can become New York, with the right angles and the right art department."


How to shoot around location red flags were well known to DP David Eggby, having filmed extensively in both the US and Australia. 'You've got to watch your framing and street signs. One of the big giveaways are pedestrian crossings. You can use a long lens and throw things out of focus in the background, and use oblique angles that don't give the landscape away, but it's always a challenge."


Location filming in New York City was scheduled before the Sydney based elements. Paul Currie says, 'We did some referencing and plate work, to ground us and to establish the geography of where different locations in the script actually were in New York. When we came back to Sydney, it was with the authentic geography and visual aesthetic of New York in mind " we made sure that streets matched the colour palette, the architecture and also matched the lighting direction of existing plates that we had already shot. If 2:22 does one thing for the Australian film industry, it shows that even on a modest budget, with good planning and some solid filmmaking
techniques, you can make movies here in Australia that can be set anywhere."


A GRAND CHALLENGE: RECREATING GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL

 

The focal point of the film – visually and narratively – is New York's Grand Central Terminal. The station lives and breathes in the film, like any other character, pulsing with beauty and danger. An enigmatic location, but one that so many people know, if only from reproduced images, it would have to be convincingly recreated in Australia on a studio set.


Of this enormous challenge, director Paul Currie says, 'The quintessential, iconic train station on the planet is Grand Central. It's one of the few train stations where people aren't just racing through; they're looking up in awe at those beautiful windows, at all its different, beautiful elements. It had to have an almost cathedral-like quality. The challenge was -Can you make Grand Central work in a

movie that you're shooting in Australia?'"


The production design team carried out a meticulous scout of Grand Central, following on from Currie's initial immersive visits during the script development period. They examined millimetre accurate plans of the station, and put this data into the digital and physical models which Paul and the team would refer to during pre-visualisation of sequences, the set building phase and also all of
the time during the shoot. Currie says, 'Everything was based on Grand Central being absolutely accurate – from the overall palette, lighting direction, fabrication, textures, right down to the smallest design detail."


From the moment Michelle McGahey was hired as the film's Production Designer, the custodianship of this challenge was entrusted to her and her team. They would eventually build around a quarter of the famous main room of the station. McGahey says, 'One of the things about Grand Central, now, is that there are buildings all around it. For our scenes set in the eighties and for the general
ambience we had to pretend that there were no buildings around the station, so that our director of photography David Eggby could create some beautiful soft lighting, and evoke the film noir mood that Paul was trying to create for the film."


McGahey, Eggby and their teams sourced a vast array of reference photographs and concept art from across the past century. David Eggby says, 'All the concept art I saw had these beautiful striations, almost like Notre Dame, these -God' rays coming from windows sixty feet up in the air, or they were photographs from the thirties, before the high rise apartments blocked the sun. You do
get some direct sunlight in Grand Central, but it's an overall ambience, lit by the chandeliers and practicals. Paul wanted to get a little more style in the frame, a bit more shadow, some chiselled lighting."


Eggby and gaffer Reggie Garside devised a system which enabled them to light the entire floor space, with one shadow and one direction of light, without having to floodlight the whole ceiling, hence avoiding a flat ambience. Paul Currie says of Production Designer Michelle McGahey, 'Her eye for detail, and that of the whole team that she employed, was fantastic. From the broad geometry to
the smallest design elements Michelle made sure everything was accurate."


Producer Steve Hutensky agrees in his praise: 'Michelle McGahey and her department did an unbelievable job. I walked through Grand Central for twenty years, and walking through the set they created, it felt like you were actually there. It was the key piece of production design for us, and that I think is really what has helped make our film look so grand, and so impressive." The ultimate approval came in the form of tears. Producer Jodi Matterson says, 'One of our distributors, who was born and bred in New York, came in and literally started crying because she was so blown away by the set that the team had created."


COSTUMES


Veteran Australian costume designer Lizzy Gardiner (THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II, HACKSAW RIDGE) came on board as a member of the creative team early in the process. Costuming explorations began several months before final casting had been completed. Gardiner recalls, 'I gathered a lot of Pinterest boards of concepts, ideas of where I wanted to take the characters. Paul Currie, the production designer Michelle McGahey and I would send these boards back and forth to each other, wherever we were in the world. When the film was fully cast I took those boards and adapted them to the actors."


The costuming was based on a cool palette that the creative team developed. Gardiner says, 'I didn't use brown once in the entire film, which was hard. Not even a watch band. I worked very much with black, ice blue, steel blue and midnight blue, greys and charcoal."

For Gardiner, the minutiae of the New York setting were key. 'I wanted to know where each character lived. New York is so specific in terms of where someone lives. Teresa's character lives in SoHo, she works in a Chelsea gallery " those people go to work dressed in high heels and it's a fabulous world in terms of fashion, so I really wanted to go there with the character of Sarah. Teresa is incredibly beautiful, so it wasn't hard."


Of the male characters, Gardiner feels that the differences in the way she would costume them were clear from the script. 'Jonas is a New York high fashion, high art, and high concept guy. Dylan is a deep thinker who's very grounded, almost reclusive; the last thing he's interested in is that sort of high concept world."


The Grand Central Terminal scenes meant, of course, a lot of extras. Given budget constraints, their costumes had to come into careful consideration.


Gardiner says: 'We were in a quandary – how do we dress all these extras within budget? Michelle McGahey and I came up with the idea to dress them all in black, so they move like black ants in the background of every shot. It's not completely black, there are a couple of breaks in the colour scheme, but it solved a lot of problems. When you have a look at footage of Grand Central, most people are dressed in black, and our design looks stylish and noir, so I think it was a good decision." Overall, Gardiner feels that 'for not a lot of money we managed to pull off a high fashion film, which is great. We really did try to make it as -on point' as possible."


HAIR AND MAKEUP


Renowned Australian Hair and Makeup lead Shane Thomas (STAR WARS: EPISODE III, UNBROKEN, THE DRESSMAKER, HACKSAW RIDGE) was working on THE MOON AND THE SUN, which Paul Currie was producing with Executive Producer of 2:22 Bill Mechanic, when Currie passed him the script of 2:22 to read.


Thomas was immediately captivated. 'I was really, really keen to be involved in 2:22. At one point I wasn't going to be able to work on it, but fortuitously the dates shifted and I was able to jump on board."


Working closely on the palette and character details with Michelle McGahey and Lizzy Gardiner, Thomas was likewise influenced by the specificity of New York and its neighbourhoods. Feeling that films set in the present day can sometimes suffer from being -overdesigned', his idea with 2:22 was to keep the hair and makeup design subtle, and let the performances tell the story.


'New York has a very specific look," says Thomas, 'not just in terms of fashion, but also hair and makeup. It's generally a very understated, stylized look. When I go to New York, in the cooler months, I notice there's not a great deal of colour, it's very dark and chic. Like Lizzy, I also put vision boards together of people on the streets in New York and tried to replicate that."


In terms of the character differentiations, Thomas says, 'Jonas is quite a dark character and the actor who portrays him, Sam Reid, is almost like an English gentleman, so I wanted to separate him from Michiel Huisman's character, Dylan, because they're at opposite ends of the spectrum. I gave Jonas long hair. Sam Reid, the first day we put the wig on him, said, -You've pretty much done all of
my preparation for me, this just solved all of my problems!'"


'Sarah had to have a sense of cool and chic about her, but at the same time a certain vulnerability. Michiel Huisman is a great actor, but it was more about trying to move him, playing Dylan, away from how he often appears in films. I wanted to make him look like the particular New York character that he is, and again, keep the approach simple and let the performance tell the story."


WORKING TOGETHER: PAUL CURRIE AND THE LEAD CAST


Cast and crew reflect on working with Director/Producer Paul Currie, and with the lead cast. Teresa Palmer says, 'Paul has amazing energy and seems to be hyper aware of his positive energy and how that affects other people. He never seemed to have a bad day " he was switched on and very focused. He would throw ideas at me in the middle of performance. I would be moving one way within the take, then all of a sudden he'd throw something from left of centre, and it would steer me down a new path that was radical, interesting and dynamic."


'Michiel is a breath of fresh air. His star is on the rise, but he's so unaffected by it all - he's a humble man who's dedicated to his craft. Paul Currie would say: 'Michiel is exciting because he is just so moment to moment."


'Sam Reid is an amazing human being. He's not only a very technical actor, he's also very instinctual. It was amazing to see how he bounced between the two. Jonas was a very challenging role, because he is a dark character, but you still need him to be likeable, and Sam was able to achieve both." Sam Reid says, 'Paul's wonderful. He has so much energy, the guy never stops running. He's a wonderful director to work with because he gives you so many options, and wants to explore them all. I felt I could trust him completely."


'Teresa's beautiful, very talented and so funny. We had a great time, I felt very lucky to be working with her because she's such a fantastic actress."


Paul Currie says, 'Michiel has a great actor's brain for both logic and what behaviour and psychology is emotionally authentic. He makes for a really strong romantic lead, and because he's grounded at the same time possessing great energy, he could hold both the romance and the action of 2:22." Steve Hutensky says, 'Paul Currie is an exceptionally talented guy, and the heart and soul of his talent lies in his ability with actors. Michiel, Teresa, and Sam have completely different acting styles, yet there was a communication with Paul that I think brought out the best work I've seen in any of the lead actors. Paul knows how to speak to each person in their own language, how to motivate and challenge them in a way that is exceptional. 2:22 is a romantic thriller with some tough underlying themes, and he had a beautiful touch in balancing the romance and the thriller aspects, and keeping the story propelled."


Many of the Australian based crew of 2:22 had worked on THE MOON AND THE SUN, which had primarily filmed in Australia, and on which Paul Currie was a producer with Bill Mechanic and Steve Hutensky an executive producer.


Common key crew members included Production Designer Michelle McGahey, Costume Designer Lizzy Gardiner, and Hair and Makeup Lead Shane Thomas, and Director of Photography David Eggby. Lead cast and key crew are universal in their adulation of the entire Australian team. David Eggby says of the camera and lighting department, 'I can't fault them. Australia has got some great
technicians, all very experienced, very well equipped. It's a very talented, a very good team." Michiel Huisman says, 'We had an amazing crew. I don't know if that's an Australian thing or if it was unique to our movie, but it felt like a great collaboration between all the departments. It was addictive, I was happy every morning when they picked me up at 5:30am!"


Teresa Palmer says of working in her home country, 'It feels more like a collaborative process " I think because typically I'm doing a smaller budget movie in Australia. There's a certain camaraderie that you find with Australian crews, a partnership in that we're all working together to create this thing that we all love. I saw how happy the crew of 2:22 were coming to work, how they went above
and beyond for the film."


Sam Reid says, 'The crew did such an incredible job with the production design, the costume design, the hair and makeup, the visual effects " some of the best talent in Australia put this world, this very specific New York high art world together, in such a stylised and beautiful way."


For Paul Currie, 'We can do reasonably priced quality genre films in Australia that can work well in the international market. We've got the people and the expertise to do them, and to do them for a budget that makes Australian teams competitive in a global market, and that's very exciting."

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