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Straight from the Set Part 5.3: Meeting Sir Ben Kingsley

It was a long week of spilling all the beans on my visit to the set of Ender’s Game last year and I definitely think all that word spewing burnt me out. I’ve still got one last report and you can bet the best has been saved for last. Or rather, the best for me.

Not that meeting everyone else wasn’t just flat out amazing, but keep in mind we were at the end of a full day on set. They were going to stick us back in the van and take us back to the hotel. I was looking around for something to tie myself down to so that I could insist that I had to stay longer.

Then they announce that Sir Ben Kingsley is willing to give us ten minutes of his time between scenes. They led us to a some dark formic room on the Eros set that had already had the lights removed. It was stifling in there and we simply waited for him to arrive. I suddenly found myself suffering from some weird kind of anxious terror. What in the heck do you ask a knighted actor you’ve seen in movies all your life?

After a while, footsteps echoed down the hall and suddenly Mazer Rackham walked into the room. Now, we’d already seen a photo of Sir Ben Kingsley in his Maori tā moko makeup, but for some reason I was expecting just the actor. So when he walked into the room in full makeup and costume, I went from anxious terror to dizzying terror.

He sat down on a stool and in a really weird moment, we suddenly all swarmed around him, recorders in hand.

“So your tattoo must have hurt really bad.” joked a woman in our group.

“That’s right! Agony, yeah.” he said, playing along. I asked him how long it takes to put on. “It takes an hour and a half. I sit very still.”

Though we only talked to him for a brief four minutes, Kingsley seemed to have a great appreciation for science fiction, which is perhaps why he went on to star in Our Robot Overlords. “Very often, bad science fiction is completely locked into the present; they have no perception–who could?–of the future. It takes a great imagination to transcend the limits of what we know.”

Since he’d worked with Asa Butterfield previously on Hugo, we asked what it was like working with him again and whether he’d changed, other than the obvious six-inch growth spurt. “We have a very good working relationship. Very good. He’s pure, he’s simple, he’s uncluttered. He’s highly intelligent and there’s no wasted time on the set with Asa. It’s a great relationship.”

As for whether he ever gives Butterfield any advice, he assured us they never give each other advice. Instead, they work and learn from each other through osmosis. “The wonderful thing about making a film is that it’s collaborative, and if you are alert to what’s around you. You will learn, and you’ll probably teach.”

When I asked him what impressed him the most about the project, he had an interesting answer. It was collaboration between all the different departments that impressed him the most. “To see it all being coordinated is a great sight.”

I feel I should note that this question I asked him became one of the most memorable parts of my time on set. I don’t know if it was because he was still slightly in character, having just walked off the set, but when he spoke to me he locked eye contact with me and I felt like he was somehow staring into my soul. I felt paralyzed until he looked at someone else. He simply looked that intense.

Earlier in the year, Kingsley had starred opposite another Hugo co-star Sacha Baron Cohen in The Dictator, which is a decidedly different type of role for an Academy Award-winning actor. When asked what makes him choose such vastly differing roles, he simply told us that change is good. “[It’s] one of the most exciting things about my life. Every day’s different, every role’s different, every director’s different, every script is different. So if you’re blessed, it’s going to be a bonus in that part of your life. Some actors tend to play the same role over and over again–and they’re very good at it. But I’ve been really fortunate. It’s great to change.”

Before we knew it, he was whisked away to resume filming, but not without a few parting words. “Lovely to meet you all! I really hope you enjoy the movie when it comes out. Thanks for your enthusiasm. Spread the word!”

And that was something we were all more than happy to do.

This concludes EnderWiggin.net’s ‘Straight from the Set’ reports. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading all about our time on the Ender’s Game set!

September 10, 2013
Straight from the Set Part 5.2: Kicking it with Garrett Warren

“Everyone who’s been here? I follow ’em religiously. I actually read everyone’s blog.”

“No pressure, guys.” quipped Kelly.

And that’s how things started with Garrett Warren, stunt coordinator for Ender’s Game. When you first see him, he’s a tad intimidating, since he sports an eyepatch, but once he starts talking you immediately realize what a warm and friendly person he is.

Warren was introduced to Ender’s Game through his daughter in about 2009. He’d been attracted by the cool cover of the book, though none of us thought to ask him which cover it was. A conscious parent, he told us he’d read The Hunger Games and even Twilight to stay in tune with her reading habits. So when it came time for Ender, he was a bit taken aback. “I was dumbfounded that I didn’t find it earlier. I took an awful lot out of it and I liked it an awful lot. I mean, I have to admit, the book is far ahead of its time if you ask me.”

With three kids of his own growing up incredibly fast, using technology such as iPads in school, Warren said he could see the future generation of children simply being that sharp just by the world they grow up in. “I think that exponentially by the time they would be growing up as they were in this book, it may just be that fast, you know?”

A former professional fighter, Warren compared the principles of Ender’s Game to that of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. “It’s a really good book as far as teaching you how to relate to other people, whether it be family members or even business contacts in this world. It’s incredibly valuable to children as well as adults, so I liked that.”

When asked about the pros and cons of working with kids under time restrictions, Warren admitted that the rules were broken, but not for lack of trying on their part. “The kids did not want to get out of the wires. They had an awful lot of fun. They would find themselves time while they were doing shots to run over to where we were with our wires and jump in for rehearsals. I’m very fortunate in saying this, because by the end of their training period, they were all very proficient at flying in these wires. They did it all themselves. So I can’t tell you how excited I am for the world to see these kids actually doing their own movements, their own choreography, their own stunts, and their own action. It’s beautiful.”

While all the kids did great in the wires, Warren singled out Moises Arias and Aramis Knight out for being particularly amazing with the wires. Aramis, described by Warren as a “showboat on a wire” was all about doing flips and bouncing off the walls. Moises was particularly good at looking flawlessly weightless and really impressed the Cirque du Soleil acrobats that were on set as stunt doubles.

They became so good that for the most part the stunt doubles ended up being there simply to teach them and help them adjust their harnesses. It was amazing to hear him talk about how what the kids went through was some of the greatest training he had ever experienced as a filmmaker. And this is the guy who was stunt coordinator for movies like Avatar and Real Steel.

“The apparatus that we have was an apparatus that hasn’t been used in this way in the movie industry before, so it’s incredibly difficult. You have to have incredible stomach muscles and lower back muscles to be able to use this piece of equipment that we developed for this movie. And so all the kids when they first got in here were just dying, you know – “Oh my gosh, this is so hard, it’s hurting my back, ahh!” And by the end of about six or seven days, they were all great. No complaints, they were all 100% ready to do whatever the stunt was that we gave them. It was awesome.”

We’ve talked to the cast in the last month and anytime the conversation shifts to either Gavin Hood or Garrett Warren, the kids immediately light up and the feeling is mutual. “I honestly believe that these are the greatest kids I’ve ever worked with, so my hat’s off to Gavin for his casting process, and my hat’s off to the producers for finding these kids because these kids are the next greats in Hollywood.”

He tried to be vague about a particular fight scene that he was especially proud of that he said he’s putting in his reel, but I quickly asked if he was referring to the shower scene, which surprised him since he wasn’t aware of what the producers were showing us. “It’s filmed so well… Gavin did such a great job, and Asa and Moises did such an amazing job, that it goes down in the annals of history as a fight sequence that many people will copy, I think, for years to come.”

The fight incorporated MMA as well as Krav maga, but Hood insisted that aikido be very prominent as well, due to it’s artistic nature. I myself studied aikido for years, so when he started talking about how aikido is all about using the momentum of the attacker against them, it brought back a lot of fond memories and I suddenly felt inspired to return. Sadly, I haven’t, but there’s still hope for me, right?

Warren had a great grasp of what could be going through Ender’s mind during this fight, so the conversation with him left me feeling really great about what he helped create in that scene. “The fight is awesome. I would like to say it’s brutal, but it’s incredibly intelligent, so it’s more than just brutal.” he said, noting that it was about striking a delicate balance of military and yet still being aware they’re children. “If a genius was to fight, and yet have a dark side inside of them that they’re battling with and having to come to grips with, this is it.”

Fight sequences and training aside, he also mentioned that the steam in the film is all real. “That was a pain in the rear end.” he joked. He also mentioned that they did one continuous take of the shower fight from beginning to end, but obviously he had no way of knowing whether it would make it into the final cut. Even if it doesn’t, something like that seems to scream “DVD extra”, especially since Warren spoke so highly of the performances of Moises and Asa.

When teaching the kids how to fight on camera, Warren says they had to go slowly in terms of intensity. There were lots of takes trying to build them up to the level that Hood was looking for, but safety always came first. “Nobody [got hurt], thank goodness. Nobody even got a sprained finger. However, it took a long time to get there, so that they didn’t get hurt.”

It was astonishing to hear just how many innovative things they developed for Ender’s Game. Warren assured us that at the time there was nothing else out there that could simulate weightlessness than the apparatus they’d developed, along with something called a lollipop. He even talked about trying to get a technical award from the Academy for their inventions.

As we were wrapping up the interview, talk shifted back to his incorporation of MMA and it turns out he had just finished a movie where he was working concurrently with the UFC and several UFC fighters. A cue they took from the sport was relentlessness. “When you get someone on the ground, you don’t let up.” he said. “You don’t just hit someone once; you hit them until they don’t stop moving.”

And that sure sounds like a familiar concept in the world of Ender Wiggin.

September 4, 2013
Straight from the Set Part 5.1: Building the Battle Room

We Launchies have it easy. We sit here, look at everything Summit gives us to do with Ender’s Game, critique, nerd-out, etc. But just how does one go about building Ender’s world? That’s all I could think about sitting in the dark barracks (the lights were no longer working) waiting to talk to Sean Haworth and Ben Proctor, set designers for Ender’s Game.

I mean, I was sitting in a Battle School Army barracks. I’d walked through a massive metal hallway to get to it. There were bunk beds to sit on, lockers to go through, and actual ladders to climb to the top bunk. Where does one start with such a freakishly daunting task?

The two wizards who made it happen sat down on bunks across from us and happily chatted about how they’d ended up on the crew. Proctor told us an amusing story of how he’d cold emailed author Orson Scott Card asking if a movie was going to be made. It made me laugh inside. He was a curious, anxious, impatient fan like me. Only his job was a whole lot cooler.

When NASA workers were cleaning out the warehouse space for them to work in, they began to dump a lot of materials. Materials which would prove invaluable to a pair of sci-fi set designers. “We heard about it and we went down there and we saw them moving all these beautiful boxes of bolts and connections and hoses and we basically just stopped them. We started ripping everything off of there.” Haworth recalled.

“Can we have this?”

“Oh no, it’s junk.”

“No, no, no it’s not junk, it’s good!”

They spent a whole day rifling through the stuff scheduled for recycling, since there’s a specific life span for the parts. Things like bolts they were able to keep, but larger pieces such as brackets all had to be accounted for and returned. Still, having access to a NASA “junkyard” meant scavenging $80 titanium bolts, which can’t be a bad thing. For anything else they needed, they would cast and replicate.

When they first met with director Gavin Hood, he already had a pretty firm idea of what he wanted and it was clear to him why some of the choices were made, such as limiting the school to only one Battle Room. “If you think about the number of kids that actually are involved in this many armies or a number of armies it’s actually manageable to digest in the context of the movie, the station doesn’t need to be that big with multiple battle rooms.” explained Proctor. “There’s just no need for that much overhead.”

Proctor explained to us some of the mechanics behind the glass shield around the Battle Room and how an orbit around Earth only takes 45 minutes, which meant the lighting in the room would change pretty rapidly during a battle. A satellite engineer pointed out that with that design, the sun would cook the kids instantly at certain parts of the day, so they will make it so that during those times, the glass is clearly protected by some kind of metallic sheen that represents a reflective coating.

When it came to the interiors of the school, Proctor admitted that there’s definitely a common look when it comes to space ships and they wanted to keep that while still looking fresh and real to people. It was a matter of striking a balance so that they weren’t being technologically slick just for the sake of it. “It should be more like […] being sent off to something that looks like something NASA would make in seventy years.”

Ships that dock with the school attach to the surface, though that wasn’t something that sat very well with self-proclaimed super geeks like Haworth and Proctor. “We’d be like, “It wouldn’t be like that. Have you seen 2001?” There’s a reason they go to the center, because it’s really easy to match orbit!” Proctor admits that ultimately it didn’t matter though, since Hood had creative prerogatives that they had to adhere to. “It does latch on to the wheel and kinda flow around in this elegant new way of making it attach, so it doesn’t go into a hole, it actually just docks. We actually invented this sort of robotic mechanism a teeny bit like the canadarm on the shuttle, one of those arms that come out and catch it in a sense and click it into place as it now starts to flow with the station and spin around.”

For lighting and the color palette of the sets, Haworth said that Hood had a very set idea on the color progression of the film. Earth and Battle School representing humans would be mostly blues and greys with splashes of color for the armies and then eventually they would transition to the amber tones of Eros where the Formics used to live. And indeed, you can see the stark contrast of humans in a Formic environment in scenes in the trailer.

And while it may not have been executed perfectly, audiences should be able to unconsciously follow the color changes. “You know who’s who. You have an overall sort of color arc or color script of the movie.”

The gate and staging area were their personal favorite sets, with Proctor saying that his choice was purely on a craft level. “That was probably the most well executed set.”

While the book may have implied a lot of potential scenes for Formics, the majority of what we see of the aliens will be in the construction; their caves, their ships. Designing and constructing the Formic sets required the help of many different designers including their lead sculptor, who had done a lot of research on his own.

“Ender will discover his enemy essentially through his environment so we had to convey a certain sense of beauty and elegance to get him to try and understand who he was and who he’s destroying.” said Haworth. The main thing was to convey creative continuity, since Formic structures would have been constructed with thousands of hands of the queen.

An interesting parallel between production and the Formics came with the 3D printer that was available as a prize at the Ender’s Game Experience. “They would kind of just swarm over something just licking it and creating it layer by layer by layer and that’s where this striation comes from. So it’s kind of cool, licking a spacecraft into existence.” joked Proctor. They used the printer to make some things for the set and the printer worked in a way that reminded him of how Formics would have built. They even featured a small printer in Ender’s room on Earth.

In addition, with the Formics came a sort of religious analogy with a Formic cathedral set that they hoped to incorporate into the film, but it ultimately was too complicated to integrate an alien religion into the film and so they changed it to be part of the mind game. It sheds some light on how they’ve changed Eros in the film. “It switched identities into being more of her nursery which gave us opportunities that it didn’t have before, to have dead kids essentially.” said Proctor. “When we came and bombed Eros the mind game became something different. The mind game became a memory, a multi-bodied memory of what the queen had of what it was like to be bombed, to be scared and to run into the cathedral, and then have it get collapsed on top of you. That’s the whole story that really happened on Eros.”

With what he’s saying, it definitely sounds like Eros has become the setting for the ending scene with Ender finding the real mind game scenes made for him somewhere on the planet. It’s an understandable change since the movie’s timeline had to be condensed. Proctor confirms it by explaining the reasoning behind the change, “If we don’t really get to go to the Formic planet ever, then how do we go to one of their spaces? And that was the answer, was Eros is not an asteroid with little tube holes in it, it’s a proper planetoid with an atmosphere that would look a bit like the formic home planet. It gives you a preview, it gives Ender a preview, of what their world and their society really feels like.”

One of the producers also confirmed that it may intentionally be called something else, such as Command School, so it’s not clear yet whether we’ll actually hear it referred to as Eros.

I asked if, since they were book fans, if it was any harder to break down these sets than any others. While Haworth said that it happens all the time to them and that they can’t get too attached, Proctor did admit it was sad. “The good news is that hopefully the gate, if all goes well, that the gate you just saw will be the Comic Con booth in 2013, so everyone will get to experience that directly.”

We all know now that everything did go well and fans were able to experience that and much more for themselves!

In closing, they commented on how fun the project was for them and how great their work environment had turned out to be. “It’s rare that we have this kind of dedication from a crew. Every plasterer, every painter, every carpenter was giddy. We almost had the pick of the litter where everyone wanted to work on this. Pretty much everyone we talk to is [a] serious fan.”

Stay tuned for our final two reports coming out later today with stunt coordinator Garrett Warren and Sir Ben Kingsley.

September 4, 2013
Straight from the Set Part 4: Ender and His Jeesh

We were sitting in a room waiting for the young cast to come in when the silliest thought popped into my head. We were about to interview the majority of Dragon Army. I felt like a reporter in the Enderverse, chosen to fly up to Battle School to talk to the future heroes of Earth before they headed off to some undisclosed location. And then Academy-award nominated actress Hailee Steinfeld walked into the room and snapped me back to reality.

The first time I’d seen young Hailee was on screen when she was just thirteen years old. I sat in the theater with my husband watching True Grit and thought, “Just who the hell is this girl?” She blew me away. I went home and looked her up and was astounded to learn that she’d been among 15,000 girls that auditioned for the role of Mattie Ross. Watching her stand her ground with the likes of Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon while barely a teenager, I knew she was someone special. An Academy-award nomination would later confirm I wasn’t the only one who thought that.

But while acting with Jeff Bridges would clearly unnerve even an Oscar winner like Jennifer Lawrence, so having time to just be a kid with other kids must be its own breed of cool. And that’s just what she confirmed for us right off the bat. “It’s been so much fun, you know, more fun than I imagined.”

And then, before we knew it, Asa Butterfield had walked into the room. The first thing you notice about Asa (pronounced ay-sah) is how slight he is in stature. So while many of you may be having a hard time with his height, he still has this vulnerability to him because he is so thin. That is, until he stares you in the eyes. A piercing blue, our Ender Wiggin has an intense stare, one that would make any fan somehow comforted by the fact that the person playing him can make you feel intimidated even if he’s less than half your age.

We got right into talking about his audition. How exactly did director Gavin Hood find that one boy in a million to play the boy genius savior of Earth that people had been waiting literally decades for in theaters? Turns out he was in Los Angeles and auditioned for Hood in person. Later, just as he and his mother were to leave for New York to do press for Hugo, his mother walks into the room and tells him to take a deep breath. Right then, he knew he’d gotten the part. “I literally screamed. Like I was flipping out. It was amazing.”

During our interview with the producers, Linda McDonough had related a story to us about a time when the kids just couldn’t stop laughing. Under pressure to keep on schedule, the producers were agitated when the laughing spread to the crew. Hailee and Asa gave us a bit more insight into just what was so funny. Stunt coordinator Garrett Warren had put them into a wheel harness they called the “hamster wheel” that flew them around. At one point the two of them were upside down, wearing their really tight helmets.

“[It] made us look…sort of hamster-ish. Hence the name.” laughed Asa. “Usually around 5:00, 5:15 […] we reach delirious point. At which point anything, if we work together, anything we say, we’ll just be on the floor laughing.”

Off the set, the kids didn’t have much to do in New Orleans since none of them were 21, so they simply hung out together. “I think the weekend is really our time to relax so there’s just kind of going over to each other’s houses or just laying low, really. Just spending time together is, you know, the best.” said Hailee. This included things like Aramis teaching the other boys basketball and Asa teaching Suraj how to beat box.

While we’ve heard that Moises Arias (Bonzo) was intimidating to the background extras, Asa insists they were all like family and had no problems being professional once they came on set. Before they were to do the shower scene, Asa said he and Moises were fantasizing about what they were going to be doing during the fight. “We both were like wondering, “Am I going to do a back flip over you or something?”” he said, grinning. “It’s an amazing scene. [D]ifficult to shoot because they could never show me naked, but yeah, it was an amazing scene.”

When we asked about the pressure of adapting such a classic novel with a longtime fanbase, Steinfeld said she didn’t look at it as pressure so much as an honor. “I told my mom […] one of the main things I want to do in this is still appeal to the massive cult that already follows Ender’s Game.” said Asa.

As we chatted with Asa and Hailee, a monstrous man walked in the door. Being a die-hard Game of Thrones fan since the 1990s, I simply knew him as Xaro Xhoan Daxos. Nonso Anozie, who plays Sergeant Dap, had to bend over to get into the room. He then sat down and crossed his massive arms.

Trained by a real drill sergeant, Anozie admitted he wasn’t sure about something. “A few weeks before we actually started filming […] I was wondering how far I could go, if I could shout at the kids.”

We certainly wanted to know too! “He shouted.” confirmed Asa, and everyone laughed.

“After my initial few scenes I was walking around for a few days with a hoarse throat; I was screaming pretty loud.” said Anozie, chuckling.

Eventually, we were joined by a large group of cast members: the rest of the jeesh. Aramis Knight, Suraj Partha, Caleb Thaggard, Khylin Rhambo, and Conor Carroll rolled into the room and started telling us what they’d pick to take from the set. Aramis wanted the little compacted mouse they’d used earlier that day. Khylin would keep his flash gun. Caleb and Nonso said they’d definitely keep their desks. “They’re really, really cool. A lot of the stuff is working, a lot of the stuff you can actually hold and pick up. That’s the thing I like about this movie, the things you can actually grab hold of.” said Anozie.

Suraj was thinking a little bigger than the rest of them. “I [w]ould take the whole thing and literally make a museum out of it.”

When talk moved on to the Formics, they had differing opinions about the aliens. Giant ants with claws and teeth. Intimidating. Advanced, like a threat. Conor said he was most afraid of the thought of being a Formic because that’d mean he’d have to be around Formics all the time. Yet they’re not without their own unique beauty. As Suraj put it, “You’re supposed to be grossed out by them but they’ve done a good job with the color, really making them creatures that, once you get to know them, you would love them and you’d want to live in peace with them. It’s really interesting.”

They’ve talked extensively in other interviews about going to Space Camp for training and they were more than excited to tell us about all the muscles they’d developed with all the physical training involved.

Khylin told us one of the things he was most anxious about was how it would turn out, since it was no doubt going to be difficult acting and somersaulting while being in pain. However, with daily practice, it wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d anticipated. There may have been some joking about 6, 12, 18, and 20 packs. One of the most fun stunts they did was their first going into the Battle Room. “It was on a zip line.” recalled Khylin. “And they said, “Let go. Go as fast as you want, run, whatever you want to do and like if you want to flip or you just jump out.” It was amazing.”

While at Space Camp, they even got fly a simulator, though none of them were good at it except for Suraj. “I literally crashed my plane at least 17 times.” admitted Conor.

To get themselves riled up for filming, they’d chant and even gave us a demonstration. “We had a bunch of different chants.

As mentioned in our talk with Christine Bieselin-Clark, the flash suits were fantastic, but when we asked if they were comfortable… “NO. No, no.” they all agreed. “My favorite looking is the flash suits.” joked Khylin.

The way Suraj tells it, getting dressed in their flash suits sounded like the scene in Ender’s Shadow when Bean has to jury rig his suit to fit his small body and it’s in pieces at his feet. “I don’t think that anyone is ever going to realize that to get these things on we had like 4 people on us tugging at the pants, trying to get the jacket over, and trying to zip this up so this is.” And Bean did chime in on the difficulty.

“I remember the first time and all of us tried it on at the same time and I remember all of us were like, “Yeah! We can do this.” Fifteen minutes later: “I can’t do this.” ‘Cause, it’s not like it’s really like… you can move, it just gets tough to breathe after a while because it’s tight and so well-fitted. And it also gets hot cause there were at least nine layers, at least.”

Lucky for them though, there was no strict diet. Just a friendly reminder here and there to stop growing so fast, though the training would make them bulk up enough where the initial fitted suit was too tight. “I almost fainted. It was like getting hugged by Nonso.” said Khylin. Even so, cast-mate Moises would always try his best to keep the rest of them eating right.

“He won’t eat anything unhealthy. He is the most healthy person I’ve ever met.” said Suraj. As if on cue, we suddenly found ourselves talking favorite Pop Tarts, a conversation that no doubt would have had Moises shaking his head. Aramis was bemoaning the fact that he can’t find his favorite Wild Berry type in LA, when someone told him that they’ve spotted those before. He quickly raised his hand to his mom in the back of the room, saying, “Write that down!”

Just as Caleb was telling us about setting a toaster on fire while trying to toast a S’mores Pop Tart, Nonso dropped the bombshell on us. He’d never had one. “They’re like little toasty things with jam inside?” he asked.

As for whether they’re signed on to do more movies? Caleb had the most straightforward answer. “Let’s just say this: Hopefully people buy enough tickets and we’ll all get to find out.”

Hopefully indeed!

Our set visit reports will conclude tomorrow with our interview with stunt coordinator Garrett Warren, set designers Ben Proctor and Sean Haworth, and Sir Ben Kingsley.

September 3, 2013
Straight from the Set Part 3: Flash Suits and Flash Guns

You are reading Part 3 of a five-part Ender’s Game set report series scheduled for the next week.

Two years ago, in July 2011, EnderWiggin.net was born. I’d been Googling “Ender’s Game movie” every year or so and finally a promising hit came back with the names “Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman”. I thought, “Well, I know those guys. They write practically everything awesome for both TV and movies.” After years of disappointment, this finally sounded like something might be happening.

Little did I know that less than three months later, costume designer Christine Bieselin-Clark would begin the process of designing the flash suits that, for years, had only existed as fan art or comic illustrations. After nailing down the basic concept at the end of 2011, they began 3D digital prototyping to make them gorgeous, functional, and practical. Four specific army suits were created for use in Battle Room scenes, among them were Launchie, Salamander, and Dragon.

Eventually, Bieselin-Clark, who had done the costumes for TRON: Legacy, found herself giving a bunch of Ender’s Game nerds a tour of her little costume office on the set. Flash suits hung on a rack in the corner, photographs of the cast lined the walls, and in a corner wall the emblems which represent the Battle School armies were laid out for us to feast our eyes on. There were nine in total for Launchie, Dragon, Leopard, Rat, Centipede, Snake (which we now know as Asp), Griffin, Phoenix, and Salamander.

Bieselin-Clark credited graphic artist Zach Bannon with the design of the army logos, telling us that it was a tedious process of finding the right balance between sleek and simple yet interesting.

For the standard Battle School uniforms, the logos would be burned in to create recessed urethane patches, essentially rubber, which gave them dimension and at the same time curved to the body in a natural way with the uniforms. “Instead of there being patches or things that are embroidered, which is so identifiable to the current military, we did things that were molded and cast.”

They wanted to avoid having uniforms that looked distinctly American, so a stand collar was used, which is found more often in Middle Eastern uniforms. Still, subtlety was important to director Gavin Hood, who believed that the uniforms shouldn’t stand out too much, providing a backdrop rather than being the focus. They didn’t go strictly futuristic, either. “If you think about fashion, fashion is repetitive: there are style lines that you see now that you can point to the 60s or the 80s and say, “Oh, that’s from that time period.” But it’s present-tense, so to create something for the future, even the military, we borrowed significant style lines from all different time periods.”

When it came to the flash suits, she explained that they went for rich, saturated colors to avoid being too cute. “When you get a lot of colors going like that and they’re all kind of poppy, it seems so adorable, which isn’t really the tone of this film that we’re going for.” she laughed. To accent the dusty gray of the suit, they added just a few touches of color, such as burnt orange for Dragon and olive green for Salamander.

Using lasers and resin, they built the helmets from the ground up. By the time production ended, they’d custom built a total of 78 helmets, with the principal cast having helmets tailored specifically for their bodies. The logo on the back of the helmet was something they needed to be able to replicate quickly in case of wear and tear, so they used what was essentially a sticker that had twelve ink passes to give it some texture to tack onto the backs.

The construction of the helmet itself sounded incredibly complicated, being comprised of three separate parts: the base helmet, the mandible, and the visor. Because of potential lighting issues and reflections in the glass, they had to be able to remove the visor if needed. “We didn’t have to do that too much, though, because [our cinematographer] Don McAlpine is a genius.”

The mandible was attached magnetically and fans were built into the helmet to help with air circulation. The visor, which was attached using a clip-in system, needed open space near the mouth area so the kids could breathe and so that they wouldn’t fog up the visor while talking during filming.

And while the cast may have enjoyed the cooling effects of the fan, that was a luxury that could be taken away at any moment to avoid disruption of sound while shooting. Bieselin-Clark says they installed lithium ion batteries to control the fans by remote.

“We had to be able to shut them off without too much trouble. It was like a keyring with a bunch of car clickers on it: we’d walk around, and everyone had a little label on there so we knew who we were able to turn on and off.”

With most of the young cast being on set right smack in the middle of puberty, Bieselin-Clark said they had to design the flash suits with growth in mind. The suit was constructed of several separate pieces, with the pants extending up underneath the jacket. That way, if the jacket began to creep up, there was still fabric there to provide them with some coverage. The boots overlaid part of the pants leg and the gloves overlaid the arm.

With these design traits in place, they were able to make concessions for them quickly, rather than in a panic. “[There was no] “Oh my God, we have to make Asa a new suit. For tomorrow. That would have been awful.”

With multiples of everything, she was able to go on-set some days and have the sewing shop drop the hemline another inch on their flight suits as needed without disrupting the flow of the shoot.

Finally, one of us got up the courage to ask, “Is it okay if we touch these flash suits?” She laughed, saying as long as producer Bob Orci said it was okay. He gave us the go-ahead with a quick, “Oh, why not?” And while I give her all the credit in the world for the work she did on those suits, they still felt stiff and wearing something like that seemed like it’d be uncomfortable over a length of time, which was probably why the cast was so crazy about their plain white pajamas.

“Those kids!” she said, laughing. “Let’s just say when you put a bunch of kids in flash suits for weeks on end, then you’re like, “Now you get to go to the dorms, everyone get in bed. Put your pajamas on.” Of course they thought they were the best things ever.”

It was interesting to hear the thought process that went into designing costumes for characters such as Valentine. There was definitely a degree of desexualization for the female characters because they wanted to maintain the innocence of the kids since it’s part of the defining aspect of them as a whole. “If Valentine starts seeming sexy in some way, you just mess the whole thing up. […] You want her to be adorable, loving and charming.”

When asked if she had to do any costuming for the Formics, she adamantly denied it. “I am not costuming an alien on this movie. That is my final answer.”

“No, no, cause we wanted the aliens sexualized.” joked Orci.

She quipped back at him, “The Formic plunging neckline! We’re working on that.”

As we continued to admire the patches on the flash suits, talk shifted to what great shoulder tattoos the logos would make for diehard Ender’s Game fans. “Let’s do it tonight!” exclaimed Ryan from Fons PR.

“You are in the right town for that, just go down to Bourbon Street. We’ll send the tattoo artist the Illustrator files so they get it right.” Bieselin-Clark offered jokingly. Eventually the topic of socks in Battle School came up and they started talking about something that was both mildly thrilling and yet somewhat terrifying for a fansite.

“Turns out Garrett [Warren] reads all your blogs.” said producer Linda McDonough.

“We read all of it.” confirmed Bieselin-Clark. “We really do. And we don’t read it because we’re like, “Ooh what are they saying?” We read it because we want to know what everyone’s keen on. We want to know, what is it that’s really valuable? What is it that’s really important? And we don’t want to mess it up. We don’t want anyone to be disappointed. We want everyone to enjoy this.”

With what we saw in that office, it’s hard to imagine fans not enjoying the costumes she’d so carefully brought into reality.

Be sure to read EnderWiggin.net’s exclusive interview with Christine Bieselin-Clark at San Diego Comic Con for more on the flash suits and how they kept them clean.

Continue reading our report with details from the propmaster >>

August 30, 2013
Straight from the Set Part 2: In-Depth with Gavin Hood

You are reading Part 2 of a five-part Ender’s Game set report series scheduled for the next week.

Before I stepped on the set of Ender’s Game last May, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would I be bored? Should I bring a book? What the heck was I going to do without my phone for an entire day?

I’d been on sets before, having been a background extra for tv shows and movies and it’s usually fun, but it can also be a pretty dull affair. I’ve been yelled at by an assistant director and hilariously over-the-top coached by a PA who would eventually end up having a baby with Evangeline Lilly. I spent an afternoon as a booze cruise passenger on a boat off Waikiki, at one point with George Clooney an arm’s reach away. In contrast, I once spent an entire day napping on a concrete floor, never getting picked for any scenes.

But I’d never been on a set as press and I’d certainly never met a director before. So when Gavin Hood walked into our little chat with the cast and proceeded to talk to us with genuine excitement and friendliness, it definitely made for an amazing first impression.

Since our time on set I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with Hood twice and each time he’s been gracious and exceptionally open to talking Ender’s Game. Mention his name to the young cast and their faces immediately light up as they excitedly proclaim how amazing it was to work under his direction.

We were in the middle of listening to Asa Butterfield (Ender Wiggin) trying to describe the process for what I like to call “arm acting”. Someone in the room had asked how he does it with nothing there as a guide.

Hood, more than happy to describe the process to us in detail, explained that it wasn’t up to Butterfield to get each point of a specific motion exactly right, but rather the reverse: the graphic artists work around the motions Butterfield uses. “It’s not like, “Oh my God, you have to point at exactly that because that is where that graphic is.” Well, the graphic isn’t there yet.” he explained. “It’s kind of organic.”

Another area that the young actors had to visualize on their own was the Mind Game, which is interspersed in short bits throughout the movie and is used to present moments of discomfort that ultimately shape Ender’s moral compass with audiences. Hood recounted a scene with Ender and Alai, in which Alai is watching Ender play the Giant’s Drink and becomes alarmed when he has the mouse gouge the eye out of the giant. Ender’s facial emotion when confronted by Alai can speak volumes for his character. “That’s what great acting is. It’s that moment when that awkwardness from that little act that tells you volumes in an unspoken way.”

More Than Just Another Space Movie

Hood spoke a lot about how important it was to him to present a story that got kids talking. Is this good leadership? Bad? Is it responsible? Was Ender right or wrong? And while he’s said that he’s most excited for fans to see the Battle Room sequences, he’s not all about the epic battles and confrontations.

“So often there are films that we go to and they’re fantastic and they’re fun and they’re wonderful. But it’s like, “Well, that was great. Wanna get pizza?” as opposed to a story like Ender’s Game where kids really talk about it. “Well, what do you think about the way Ender made that decision? Was he too violent, or wasn’t he?” These are important conversations, I think, for young people to engage in in an exciting way. If you can deliver that kind of debate and conversation in an exciting, visually powerful way, then I think you’re getting a little more than just spectacle.”

Ender’s Game is not going to lack in spectacle, but it meant a lot of work in pre-production, especially since they were building so many real sets. Nonso Anozie, who plays Sergeant Dap, said the sets really helped him as an actor. “You’re not just looking at green screen all the time. There’s a lot of reality there. And as an actor it’s so good.”

It also took the combined efforts of production designers, sculptors, concept artists, and many more to ready the set for shooting. “You don’t just arrive and say, “Hey! What does the set look like?”” Hood joked.

Inspiration and Adaptation

When asked what his favorite sci-fi movie is, he quickly named 2001: A Space Odyssey and told us that it played a small role in attracting him to Ender’s Game. “[Kubrick] had an amazing digital sense and an amazing ability to combine adventure with thought-provoking material and give you a sense of both an epic journey and an awe-inspiring journey as well as an emotional story.” That certainly is a fitting way to describe the story of Ender Wiggin.

It wasn’t just about adventure though, but character. Hood was certainly aware that the film was ultimately about Ender, but the kids around him completed a puzzle that, when put together, was special and unique. “You’ve got all these marvelous, strong, well-defined characters engaged in really human and emotional stories. Bean, and Dink, and Alai, and Bernard […] and obviously Petra and Sergeant Dap. I just think it’s rich in character.”

Attracted to stories that follow characters at defining points in their lives, Hood went on to explain his personal connection to the story of Ender. Drafted into the military at the age of 17, he knew on a personal level how it felt to be looked upon as a number in an organization with authority figures he was not supposed to question. “I connected with this book in many ways based on, I think, feelings and experiences that I had had.”

When we asked about the challenges of adapting a beloved novel, Hood referenced his work on Tsotsi, another book to film adaptation he directed that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.

“It was an adaptation in which I made many changes — and [the author] was very pleased with it. He said, “Because you stayed true to the spirit of the character.” So I try to think of my characters when I’m adapting as existing outside of the material. I’m not adapting a book. Sounds like sacrilege: I am not adapting a book. I’m collaborating with an extraordinary artist who wrote that book who described the character in his medium, that now has to be translated into another medium.”

As an example, he asked us to imagine being given a photograph to create an oil painting and a sculpture. The three mediums are then presented to a class, who then proclaim that the oil painting looks nothing like the sculpture. “Of course it doesn’t. That’s an oil painting and that’s a sculpture. The question becomes: Does the oil painting capture the spirit of this boy in some unique way? Does a pencil sketch capture his spirit in a way that moves you? Does the sculpture capture the spirit in a way that moves you? And that for me is the same with books.”

Since a lot of what happens in the book are internal thoughts of Ender, Hood had to create a lot of scenes that generated feeling in a completely different way than a book. He talked about finding moments underneath and between the lines of two characters interacting. It was a challenge that followed him into the representation of two other exceptionally gifted Wiggin children.

Locke and Demosthenes

In the novel, Peter and Valentine progress as characters into the online personas of Locke and Demosthenes. But while political maneuvering and anonymous blogging can work really well on paper, it clearly wouldn’t translate very well into film. However, that did not mean that the complexities of Ender’s siblings themselves wasn’t enough to contribute to Ender’s life. “We meet Peter at the beginning of the movie, and he has everything I think that the book has, of that aggression and bully and nastiness.” explained Hood. “But […] if you had interviewed Peter and said, “Why are you doing this?” he would say, “Because [Ender] has to toughen up or he’s not going to make it.” He’s engaged in what he would justify as tough love.”

The concept of Peter’s idea of tough love is re-introduced in the third act of the film and he talked about how he did it with a scene with Valentine that is not in the book. As if sensing our interest at the mention of this scene, he then described adapting a novel as both exciting and absolutely terrifying.

“Hopefully at the end of this you go, “My God, that was an amazing representation of Ender Wiggin and those characters in a totally different medium.” If we fail at that, we fail.” Regardless of what that outcome will be, he seemed genuinely happy watching the kids grow as actors before his eyes.

“I’m really very proud of them, very proud.”

Be sure to return tomorrow to read Part 3 of our set visit report, which will cover costumes, props, and our quick chat with stunt coordinator Garrett Warren.

But before I end Part 2, I wanted to share with you all a little thing I learned while IMDBing Gavin Hood last night. As it turns out, the director didn’t just have life experience to draw on for Ender’s Game. He’s got Hollywood experience with science fiction and the military as well!

Yup, that’s Gavin Hood in a Season 8 episode of Stargate: SG-1 as Colonel Alexi Vaselov, a Russian military pilot that yearns to join a Stargate team but ends up sending the SGC into lockdown. If Harrison Ford hadn’t been available, could Richard Dean Anderson have filled Graff’s shoes? 😉

August 29, 2013
Straight from the Set Part 1: Producers Talk Ender’s Game

You are reading Part 1 of a five-part Ender’s Game set report series scheduled for the next week.

As of today, it’s been 464 days since I was on the set of Ender’s Game in New Orleans, Louisiana, staring up at vast green screens and sets in what can only be described as complete and utter awe. Never in the week leading up to that day had I imagined the place I ended up in.

I live in Hawaii, so when my journey began, I was put on a 10 hour direct flight from Honolulu to New Orleans. Seven hours into the flight I was ready to jump out of the plane, but consoled myself with thoughts about what was to come. I met Erin Gross from Ender’s Game Fansite at the airport and we shared a cab to the hotel.

After checking into one of the most gorgeous hotels I’d ever been in, I looked out the window to check out my view, then relaxed until it was time for dinner with Erin. I’d already “known” her by name through our Hunger Games websites, but this was the first time we’d spent some serious time together. It was great to finally talk with someone doing the exact same things that I was doing and who also loved Ender’s Game.

We met up with Kelly from Ender News, who would later become my podcasting partner in crime, and Cassandra from Ender’s Ansible. After a bit of chit chat, we said good night. I tried to prep questions, tried not to get too excited about the next day, and tried the impossible task of falling asleep.

In the morning, we met in the lobby and found a group of other press that would be touring with us including journalists from HitFix, IGN, J-14, and Nerdist. We were given Ender’s Game set badges (which I still have!) and hopped into a van to be driven out to Big Easy Studios at the old NASA Michoud Facility.

Once we got on site, we were taken to the production offices and lead into a conference room wallpapered in concept art and notes. I saw refreshments to the side including my weakness, strawberries, but I was too excited and almost too nauseated to eat. Bob Orci, the producer, was in the room. I’d had no idea he’d be there and being a big fan of a lot of his work, I was more than a little starstruck. Then we sat down and he and fellow producers Lynn Hendee and Linda McDonough proceeded to spew out everything I could have ever wanted to know about the movie they were making.

Ender’s World

Although they hadn’t yet taken us on a tour of anything, the initial producer’s presentation was a gold mine of imagery. If you can recall how long we all have been analyzing and scrutinizing each of the stills and imagery that come out, imagine having 50 of those flash before your eyes in a matter of minutes. I had to force myself not to shriek, “STOP! Go back! I didn’t stare at that one long enough!” Still, Bob Orci continued to flick through them one after another.

An International Fleet school on Earth. Image courtesy of Summit Entertainment.

Even though I’m a longtime fan of Ender’s Game, I admit I never put too much thought into the world that the Wiggins lived in on Earth. Judging from the still above, which Summit provided to us for this report, Ender lives near some type of metropolis. But while in the book, the Wiggins live in the city, that won’t be the case with the film. The Wiggins in the film will live in a home closer to what you may have imagined Bean visits in Shadow of the Hegemon.

“We want[ed] what’s happening on Earth to contrast to the technology of space. So many sci-fi novels present a dystopian future, kind of an ugly place, we wanted to present Ender’s world as one worth saving, one that’s become utopian in many ways.” said Orci. He showed us a slide of a beautiful home with classic columns. “Just like the Vatican is alive and well the way it’s been existing for the last five hundred years here, […] why wouldn’t there be classic houses?”

The Wiggin home is utopian indeed. We were shown photos of Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff and Viola Davis as Major Anderson inside a very picturesque living room, presumably when they’ve come (together, I might add) to take Ender to Battle School. Last month, we actually got to stand in that very same living room at the Ender’s Game Experience at Comic Con.

While a lot of the stills they showed us have been erased from my memory by time, one that managed to stick with me is an overhead shot of Valentine looking up at something with a sad look on her face, presumably at that point Ender is already gone. I can’t remember if it was a mobile or something else, but it could possibly be the plane hanging from the ceiling of his bedroom.

The homes aren’t the only things carrying “classic” themes. At school on Earth, the classrooms are designed after typical science classrooms just like one that you might have learned in yourself. When it comes to Battle School, however, you can see the contrast Orci talks about when you compare the classroom you know with this image (below) of a classroom in Battle School. We also saw a still with Ender facing off against a rather intimidating Stilson.

Some of you may remember we all got to see a photo of Ender’s monitor last year and during the presentation they showed us a photo of Ender sitting on a medical examiner’s table, with some concept art of the utopian society shown on a window behind him.

In the trailer, there’s a shot of a rocket shooting into space and I’m assuming that this is Ender and Graff launching from Earth to go to Battle School. Orci mentioned that they’d started with concept art of a space shuttle taking off like an airplane, but they were promptly shot down by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who they’d been consulting with. “[Musk] said, “No, that would never happen. Since you’re trying to get up, just point the damn thing up.””

Next: Battle School and the Battle Room >>

August 28, 2013