CraveOnline: Did you have to find a lot of that in the editing room? Because with that flashback structure, theoretically you could move anything anywhere.
Jean-Marc Vallée: Yeah, some parts were found in the editing room, but most of it was written.
Do you remember anything in particular that got shuffled around a bit?
All these quick flashes were stuff that were there, they were created in the cutting room. And some were… What could be a good example…?
Something with her mother, or maybe a revelation of what was happening?
Yeah, more flashes. There were some flashes, and we tried to put as much as possible of the mother and daughter relationship in the film, so sometimes we were just doing shots of Laura Dern on the set when she wasn’t meant to be here except for a makeup test, and whoops, okay let’s try to get her. Let’s film her in the hallway and the woods.
“Our VFX guy shot like 20 different Joshua trees over a green screen, and he multiplied them in post.”
You mean it was a behind the scenes thing that got edited in as her performance, or she just happened to be on the set and…?
She happened to be on set, for instance, for a makeup test, and then she came on the trail. Of course she’s not written on the trail, so we went, “Oh, why don’t we shoot you on the trail and we’ll see if we can use it in the cutting room?” At school at one point, she’s having a scene with Reese. She’s at school with her daughter, and then whoops, why don’t we add this scene where she’s there in a hallway alone by herself. We get little Bobbi [Strayed Lindstrom] here, our little Cheryl, why don’t we have little Cheryl run into her arms and we’ll see what we do with this? And actually we were doing a makeup test for her black eye. So stuff like that.
It’s just trying to be creative. Same thing: sometimes we shot this scene where she’s on the porch of the house with the kids and peeling potatoes. I was waiting for Reese, and [Laura Dern] was there with the kids. “Why don’t we have a scene there where you’re peeling potatoes with the kids and enjoying the sun?” It’s in the film. So every single shot we added like this, we find a way to incorporate it in the structure here and there. Just trying it sometimes, and just finding the right spot or right space.
Tell me about the trail itself. I assume you shot on the actual trail as much as you could? Or did you have to replicate it elsewhere?
Yeah, replicated a lot of it. In Oregon. 99% of the shoot was in Oregon, and of course half the film, or the first act, takes place in California. So Oregon played for California.
I did realize it was so arid up there in some places.
Yeah, well, we managed also to… We brought some Joshua trees, and we put some Joshua trees in the foreground, and our VFX guy shot like 20 different Joshua trees over a green screen, and he multiplied them in post. There’s a lot of shots where there’s 200 Joshua trees. They’re all added, just to create the California look.
