Video: ‘Asteroid City’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Hi. This is Wes Anderson. I’m the director of ‘Asteroid City.’ So this scene is close to the start of our film. We meet a common who has come to this city as one of many hosts of a gathering of younger junior astronomers and scientists, type of like a science honest in a meteor crater. And these are his opening remarks. The position was written for Jeffrey Wright, who I’ve labored with earlier than and who I like. And what I assumed is that this character goes to return out and never simply set the stage for this conference they’re doing, however extra to set the stage for the last decade. One of the form of subtexts of our film has one thing to do with how this placid interval of the ‘50s is filled with anxiety and sort of these men with post-traumatic stress disorder that’s undiagnosed, that’s being handled by means of their households. And by the point we get 10 years later, the impact that it’s going to have had on the subsequent era can be so vital that there’ll be an entire shift. Anyway, that’s type of a broad description of what’s on this little speech. “Chapter 1, I walk to school 18 miles each morning. Milked the goats, plucked the chickens, played hooky, caught fireflies, went skinny dipping in the watering holes, said my prayers every night, and got whipped with a maple switch twice a week. That was life.” We staged it in a means the place it might occur in a single shot, and it might be a efficiency like one that somebody would give on a stage. And it was a stunning factor to look at Jeffrey Wright take this scene and simply broaden it, and play it with a type of momentum and in addition form of a grandeur that was arresting to look at. Because on the day that we’re capturing it, I’m simply the viewers. “That was life. In the meantime, somebody else’s story. A man thinks up a number, divides it by a trillion, plus it into the square root of the circumference of the Earth, multiplied by the speed of a splitting atom, and voila. Progress. I’m not a scientist, you are. End of chapter 3.” The means we stage the scene, it’s form of a sophisticated rig as a result of we’ve bought to begin in a single place, then we pull again. Then, Jeffrey involves us, after which Jeffrey goes over right here, and we go over there. And Jeffrey goes over right here, and we go right here. And Jeffrey goes over right here, we transfer round aspect to aspect. And then, we push again in once more. Well to try this, you’re both going to work with a techno crane or one thing that form of telescopes and is a programmed distant head factor. Or you employ what we use, which is a loopy set of sideways dolly tracks with a piece of monitor that glides on the highest of the three tracks. So you possibly can slide ahead and again and aspect to aspect, nevertheless it’s an especially advanced rig invented by our key grip Sanjay Sami. “To Dinah Campbell.” “It’s fueled by cosmic radiation instead of sunlight.” “For her work in the area of botanical acceleration.” “Unfortunately, it makes all vegetables toxic.” “The Red Giant Sash of Honor.” Then, we shift into him introducing us to the younger individuals and what they’ve executed, and so they every get a prize. And so there’s a sequence of astronomical, celestially themed medals and badges and different kinds of issues they get. But then, we see what every of those individuals has executed. And I feel they’re fairly spectacular, you already know? I imply, from the angle of actual life, they’ve executed some excellent work, these youngsters, as we present in these scenes. [APPLAUSE]