Collider has just posted the second part of their set visit of
The Dark Knight Rises. These interviews took place while the movie was filming Pittsburgh. First up we have
Collider's interview with Lindy Hemming, who was the costume designer on Nolan's previous two Batman films.
What’s the next level for the Batman suit and please tell us about the Catwoman suit.
Lindy Hemming: Well, the Batman suit is the same, apart from any adaptations from what the action is in this film. It’s the same suit. There’s no new technology to the actual suit, so that’s the answer to that. And about the Catsuit. It’s very, very simple, and as though she’s the kind of the opposite, the female version of Batman in a way, someone who produced a suit that has a technology of its own, which is in the fabric, and has her own items she needs, functional items for what she does. I don’t know how much you know about what she does in the story. She’s a cat burglar, so she has a custom-made belt with everything to do with burglary, looking at jewelry, she has a belt that’s full of those things, all miniaturized.
What’s the tech in the fabric?
Hemming: Well, the tech in the fabric is our own creative tech. It’s not a special fabric. We made it ourselves by screenprinting the underlayer and putting a very thin silky overlayer on, because wanted to keep her very, very lithe, very, very creeping about, not robotic or anything like that, and we didn’t want it to be rubbery, shiny like the previous Michelle Pfeiffer suit, we didn’t want it to have any implication of it being a bondage or a sex kind of suit. It was to be something functional that you wear when you’re trying to creep about in the dark and not be visible basically.
When it comes to translating characters, especially when it comes to Bane with his distinctive-looking mask. What design elements do you look at specifically to try and translate? What helps you decide what to abandon?
Hemming: Well, the thing is when you look at the comic version of Bane, he’s this massive man and he’s wearing this wrestling suit and it’s a bit difficult to imagine how you can translate that into a Chris Nolan film, because everyone’s meant to have a real background and come from some real story reason. So with Bane, maybe it’s whether people like it or not, you can see him with his mercenary men and you can know in the story where he’s come from an why he is like he is, so following that route, he is much more… he’s armored and the nod towards the straps of the wrestling suit we started with, and he’s got an injury, which is why in the comic, he has to have Venom, and in our story, it’s slightly different but it’s the same kind of idea. So using all those things and using the fact that he doesn’t come from the same technology as Batman.
He doesn’t have Fox making all these things for him. His stuff has been made on the move over the mountains of the world, maybe in training camps. He’s kind of… I don’t want to say the word, you’ll say it yourself… but he’s the guy who has had his stuff made by different people along the way. So there is a slightly clunky element to him and that’s part of his story. But at the same time, the way he’s directed in the film, the menace is within him, it isn’t because he’s a wrestler, and he’s also an older character. He’s not a young kid. He’s an older man who as you see the film, you’ll know that he’s been around for a long time, so that’s as much as I can kind of tell you, but the reason he looks like he looks is he’s much more of a warrior/mercenary kind of man.
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Collider also chatted with Jordan Goldberg, co-producer for
The Dark Knight Rises. He has worked with Chris Nolan on
Inception, The Dark Knight and
The Prestige. He discusses the football scene that was filmed at the Pittsburgh Steeler's Heinz Field.
How much is the football – how big is this into the movie? Like is this like a two-minute scene? Is it a 10-minute scene?
Goldberg: Yeah I mean, it’s cutting back and forth to a lot of different events that are going on, so it’s hard to tell what the run time is. It’s pretty significant. It’s a kind of a pivotal moment in the story.
Is it about halfway through the movie, like can you say whereabouts in the movie the scene falls?
Goldberg: I wouldn’t – I couldn’t tell you that right now because I don’t really know how it’s gonna play and really in the final cut of that. But yeah, sort of near that general area.
How is Chris’ team approached shooting football. I mean, how have they acclimated to that because it’s obviously a very different sensibility. I don’t imagine Chris Nolan watches football all the time.
Goldberg: No, he doesn’t. We have a guy down there named Mark Ellis, who’s worked on a lot of sports films. Most of the sports films you’ve seen, he’s been the coordinator behind it all. Mark and I had been talking for a while and Chris had an idea how – what he wanted in the game and Chris dialed into the fact that this event should take place at the beginning of the game and the kickoff ‘cause you know, the kickoff is very iconic of any football game. So with that information, I was able to get it – we were able to design a very kind of easy play out there to kind of make the thing happen.
So it’s just one play?
Goldberg: Yeah, exactly. The event.
Can you talk a little bit about the decision to actually take this character (Batman) and put him in the daytime? Because that’s pretty significant for Nolan.
Goldberg: Yeah, it’s changed. I won’t say much because I don’t want to ruin any kind of story things for you guys, but you have to think about it because obviously the guy is built to fight at night. So the question is why. What is involved contextually of the story that would force him to take to the streets during the day? You know what I mean? And I think that alone should say, you know, that shows you when we talk about the scope and scale, it’s just like, the stakes have been increased because of, you know, he’s not in his comfort level in terms of him doing his fighting crime bit.
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The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters July 20th 2012 and stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth, Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, Tom Hardy as Bane, Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as John Blake and Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate.